Several European countries are approving legislative reforms moving to a presumed consent system in order to increase organ donation rates. Nevertheless, irrespective of the consent system in force, family's decisional capacity probably causes a greater impact on such rates. In this contribution we have developed a systematic methodology in order to analyse and compare European organ procurement laws, and we clarify the weight given by each European law to relatives' decisional capacity over individual's preferences (expressed or not while alive) regarding (...) the destination of his or her organs after death. In this sense, the results constitute the first comprehensive and comparative legislative mapping on European transplantation laws. (shrink)

La educación tradicional concebida en compartimientos estancos que coquetean en torno al árbol de la ciencia, ha formado a un individuo descontextualizado, sin capacidad de respuesta para enfrentar la complejidad del mundo actual. La Multiversidad Mundo Real “Edgar Morin” asume la misión de una enseñanza educativa basada en los postulados del Pensamiento Complejo de Edgar Morin; pero aún quedan pendientes nuevas definiciones que rompan con los esquemas de la educación basada en el paradigma simplificador. La meta es emprender el gran (...) viraje que haga posible que la reforma paradigmática implique también una reforma de las mentes y del lenguaje, porque nombrar lo nuevo con la palabra vieja dificulta a nivel inconsciente detonar el cambio. Superar los bloqueos propios y los adquiridos por la educación que nos ha conducido a ser individuos desarticulados del contexto, ese es el gran reto de la Multiversidad. (shrink)

This paper analyses the arguments for and against what we have called automatic organ procurement model in relation to the organs of the deceased. For this purpose, this work provides empirical evidence to assess the potential impact of this model on donation rates and on public opinion. Specifically, we examine first the reasons supporting this model, with special reference to utilitarian and justice arguments. On the other hand, we analyse both the approaches based on the violation of pre mortem and (...) post mortem interests opposing this theoretical model and the rejection the model would generate in the population. Finally, we point out the aspects that, in our opinion, should be exhaustively regulated if this model were implemented. In particular, we refer to the legal status of the human body, the treatments for end-of-life patients, the incentives for health professionals and the recognition of the right to conscientious objection. (shrink)

This paper explores the reception of Kant's understanding of consciousness by both Romantics and Idealists from 1785 to 1799, and traces its impact on the theory of religion. I first look at Kant's understanding of consciousness as developed in the first Critique, and then looks at how figures such as Fichte, Jacobi, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schleiermacher received this theory of consciousness and its implications for their understanding of religion.

Seen from the point of view of evaluation conditions, a usual way to obtain a connexive logic is to take a well-known negation, for example, Boolean negation or de Morgan negation, and then assign special properties to the conditional to validate Aristotle’s and Boethius’ Theses. Nonetheless, another theoretical possibility is to have the extensional or the material conditional and then assign special properties to the negation to validate the theses. In this paper we examine that possibility, not sufficiently explored in (...) the connexive literature yet.We offer a characterization of connexive negation disentangled from the cancellation account of negation, a previous attempt to define connexivity on top of a distinctive negation. We also discuss an ancient view on connexive logics, according to which a valid implication is one where the negation of the consequent is incompatible with the antecedent, and discuss the role of our idea of connexive negation for this kind of view. (shrink)

This paper explores three important criticisms of Kant's ethics by Friedrich Schleiermacher, all having to do with Kant's alleged failure to account for the value of the individual. These are: (1) Kant's formalism precludes him from specifying ends for the will, and without such ends, the moral perfection of the individual, and the genuine appreciation of the other in his or her individuality cannot become my end; (2) Kant cannot provide an adequate metaphysical grounding of the value of the individuals (...) comprising a community; (3) Kant cannot give an account of why members of a community should value the individual qua individual in relation to the community. In this paper I discuss these criticisms and their validity in detail. I show that understood properly, Kant has the resources to answer Schleiermacher's first criticism, and I show how Schleiermacher's own system sought to avoid the second and third problems. (shrink)

In Italien war die Rezeption von Jürgen Habermas über die Jahrzehnte konstant; bibliographischen Daten zufolge steht Italien nach Deutschland und den USA an dritter Stelle. Dennoch lautet unsere These, dass das Forschungsprogramm von Habermas in der italienischen scientific community marginal war – insofern ist im soziologischen Sinne Pierre Bourdieus eher von einem akademisch-wissenschaftlichen »Feld« zu sprechen, da es bezogen auf die Habermas-Rezeption keine Homogenität und Identität gibt.

This paper develops a largely neglected parallel between prudence and population ethics. Prudence is generally understood to be concerned with the balancing of well-being over time. How, precisely, well-being ought to be balanced over time, however, is a fervently debated question. I argue that developing a standard guiding such evaluations is exceedingly challenging. This is due to an often overlooked fact about prudence, namely that it shares a structural similarity with population ethics: In both contexts, we assess the comparative value (...) of populations of personstages/people, which may vary in number and level of well-being. Based on this analogy, I show that the development of an adequate theory of prudence runs into very similar impossibility results as obtain in population ethics. In particular, I prove that Arrhenius’ fifth impossibility theorem can be applied to prudence. I develop and compare four possible answers to this challenge. First, I discuss the possibility of accepting the very repugnant conclusion intrapersonally. Second, I present and further develop Donald Bruckner’s Minimax Regret approach, which gives up Transitivity. Third, I apply Jacob Nebel’s Lexical Threshold View to prudence and critically evaluate it. Lastly, I introduce what I call the Negative Lexicality View, which is based on Lexical Threshold View but overcomes some of its problems. (shrink)

El Test de Turing es un método tan controvertido como desafiante en Inteligencia Artificial. Se basa en la imitación de la conducta lingüística de humanos, y tiene como objetivo recabar evidencia empírica en favor de la tesis de que las máquinas programadas podrían pensar. Alan Turing, su creador, ha sido catalogado como conductista por la mayor parte de los comentaristas. En este capítulo muestro que no lo es. Por el contrario, Turing es un funcionalista, porque todo el énfasis del juego (...) de la imitación está en el engaño de la máquina hacia los humanos. Por ello el género es importante en dicho juego, al menos en su versión preliminar. (shrink)

It seems natural to think that emotional experiences associated with a memory of a past event are new and present emotional states triggered by the remembered event. This common conception has nonetheless been challenged at the beginning of the 20th century by intellectuals who considered that emotions can be encoded and retrieved, and that emotional aspects linked to memories of the personal past need not necessary to be new emotional responses caused by the act of recollection. They called this specific (...) kind of memories “affective memories” and defended their existence. My aim here is to expound the historical background of this debate as well as the characterization and development of the notion of affective memory since its first inception. I aim to show that although the debate was left unresolved and the term disappeared from academy around 1930, many of the characterizations of the nature of emotions and memory done by the advocates of affective memory have reappeared in the scientific agenda and been further developed during the last decades. (shrink)

En este trabajo examinamos el tópico de la responsabilidad en el derecho penal internacional a la luz de la filosofía de John Searle, y del fallo dictado por la Corte Penal Internacional en el caso de Thomas Lubanga. En el primer acápite analizamos la declaración de responsabilidad penal en función de la teoría de actos de habla de Austin y de Searle, tratándola como un acto ilocucionario cuyo significado es dependiente de un marco institucional específico. Luego, en el segundo acápite, (...) mostramos de qué forma tal marco puede reconstruirse como un ejemplo paradigmático de la realidad social construida descrita por Searle, especialmente en virtud del nexo entre mente, lenguaje y sociedad. A nuestro juicio, los conceptos de intencionalidad colectiva, atribución de funciones de estatus y poderes deónticos son fundamentales para entender tal nexo. En efecto, tal como argumentamos en la tercera sección, los sistemas de poderes deónticos asociados al derecho internacional no solo explican la aparición de Tribunales penales internacionales, como la Corte Penal Internacional, sino además el carácter imprescriptible de los crímenes de lesa humanidad. Los acuerdos internacionales que promueven y protegen los derechos humanos, y que tratan la imprescriptibilidad de aquellos crímenes, son objeto de análisis en la sección final, en donde exponemos algunas reflexiones finales a partir del caso Lubanga. (shrink)

Debate about the nature of time has been dominated by discussion of two issues: the reality of absolute time and the reality of A-series. We argue that Aristotle adopts a form of the A-theory entailing a denial of the reality of absolute time. Furthermore, Aristotle's denial of absolute time is linked to a denial of the reality of pure temporal becoming, namely, the idea that the now moves through a fixed continuum along which events are arranged in chronological order. We (...) show that the puzzles discussed by Aristotle in IV:10 of the Physics are generated by this view of time and that Aristotle's own theory of time, according to which changes are used to measure one another, avoids these problems. (shrink)

In An Inquiry into the Human Mind and in Essays on Intellectual Powers, Thomas Reid discusses what kinds of things perceivers are related to in perception. Are these things qualities of bodies, the bodies themselves, or both? This question places him in a long tradition of philosophers concerned with understanding how human perception works in connecting us with the external world. It is still an open question in the philosophy of perception whether the human perceptual system is providing us with (...) representations as of bodies, or only as of their properties. My project in this article is to explain how, on Reid's view, we can have perceptual representations as of bodies. This, in turn, enables him to argue that we have a robust understanding of the world around us, an understanding that would be missing if our perceptual system only supplied us with representations as of free-floating properties of bodies. (shrink)

Despite the popularity that the embodied cognition thesis has gained in recent years, explicit memories of events personally experienced are still conceived as disembodied mental representations. It seems that we can consciously remember our personal past through sensory imagery, through concepts, propositions and language, but not through the body. In this article, I defend the idea that the body constitutes a genuine means of representing past personal experiences. For this purpose, I focus on the analysis of bodily movements associated with (...) the retrieval of a personal memory, which have certain features that make them different from procedural memories, pragmatic actions and common gestures, as well as other forms of embodied memories found in recent literature. I refer to these as “kinetic memories” and analyse their representative nature as well as their adaptive functions. Kinetic memories are bodily movements in which some event or action that took place in the past can be seen, because they are an externalisation of the subject’s inner intention of representing a past personal experience. Kinetic memories represent a past experience sometimes by imitation of a past movement, and other times through embodied symbols and metaphors. Furthermore, although sometimes they present direct pragmatic benefits, such as communicative benefits, they seem to enhance the whole reexperience of the past event and memory recall, which I argue is one important adaptive value. (shrink)

Memory is not a unitary phenomenon. Even among the group of long-term individual memory representations (known in the literature as declarative memory) there seems to be a distinction between two kinds of memory: memory of personally experienced events (episodic memory) and memory of facts or knowledge about the world (semantic memory). Although this distinction seems very intuitive, it is not so clear in which characteristic or set of interrelated characteristics lies the difference. In this article, I present the different criteria (...) proposed in the philosophical and scientific literature in order to account for this distinction: (1) the vehicle of representation; (2) the grammar of the verb “to remember”; (3) the cause of the memory; (4) the memory content; and (5) the phenomenology of memory representations. Whereas some criteria seem more plausible than others, I show that all of them are problematic and none of them really fulfill their aim. I then briefly outline a different criterion, the affective criterion, which seems a promising line of research to try to understand the grounds of this distinction. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that some human reproductive genome editing interventions can be therapeutic in nature, and thus that it is false that all such interventions just create healthy individuals. I do this by showing that the conditions established by a therapy definition are met by certain reproductive genome editing interventions. I then defend this position against two objections: (a) reproductive genome editing interventions do not attain one of the two conditions for something to be a therapy, and (b) (...) some reproductive genome editing interventions are therapeutic but in a nonstandard way. In the Conclusion I call for a more nuanced discussion of the nature of reproductive genome editing interventions. (shrink)

Recent breakthroughs in stem cell differentiation and reprogramming suggest that functional human gametes could soon be created in vitro. While the ethical debate on the uses of in vitro generated gametes (IVG) was originally constrained by the fact that they could be derived only from embryonic stem cell lines, the advent of somatic cell reprogramming, with the possibility to easily derive human induced pluripotent stem cells from any individual, affords now a major leap in the feasibility of IVG derivation and (...) in the scope of their potential applications. In this paper we develop an ethical framework, rooted in recent scientific evidence, to support a robust experimental pipeline that could enable the first-in-human use of IVG. We then apply this framework to the following objectives: (1) a clarification of the genetic parenting options afforded by IVG, along with their ethical underpinnings; (2) a defence of the use of IVG to remedy infertility, broadening their scope to same-sex couples; (3) an assessment of the most far-reaching implications of IVG for multiplex parenting. These include, first, the liberation of parenting roles from the constraints of biological generations in vivo, allowing multiple individuals to engage in genetic parenting together, thus blurring the distinction between biological and social generations. Second, we discuss the conflation of IVG with sequencing technology and its implications for the possibility that prospective parents may choose among a hitherto unprecedented number of potential children. In view of these perspectives, we argue that, contrary to the exhausted paradigm according to which society lags behind science, IVG may represent instead a salient and most visible instance where biotechnological ingenuity could be used in pursuit of social experimentation. (shrink)

It is widely held that there is a distinctive norm of assertion. A plausible idea is that there is an analogous, perhaps weaker, norm for indirect communication via implicatures. I argue against this type of proposal. My claim is that the norm of assertion is a social norm governing public updates to the conversational record. Off the record implicatures are not subject to social norms of this type. I grant that, as happens in general with intentional actions, off the record (...) communicative acts may be subject to normative assessments on different levels (for instance, regarding their moral or prudential appropriateness). However, such assessments do not generate distinctive norms that apply to all cases of implicature. (shrink)

The notion of epistemic responsibility applied to memory has been in general examined in the framework of the responsibilities that a collective holds for past injustices, but it has never been the object of an analysis of its own. In this article, I propose to isolate and explore it in detail. For this purpose, I start by conceptualizing the epistemic responsibility applied to individual memories. I conclude that an epistemic responsible individual rememberer is a vigilant agent who knows when to (...) engage in different kinds of mental and non-mental actions in order to monitor and update her memories, and who develops and nurture different kinds of virtuous attitudes that guide those actions. These (epistemic) virtuous attitudes are oriented not only towards herself but also towards others. Whereas this conception of epistemic responsibility does not pose a problem to understand shared memories of family members and friends, it may seem suspicious when applied to large-scale collective memories. These memories, which I name historical memories, are memories of events that have a traumatic impact for the community, are permeated by unequal relations of power, keep a complex relationship with historical science, and present other characteristics that distinguish them from individual memories. But despite these differences, the analysis undertaken in this work shows that the general principles that govern the epistemic responsibility of individual and (large-scale) collective rememberers are similar, and are based on similar grounds: pragmatic considerations about the consequences of misremembering or forgetting and a feeling of care. The similarities at the individual and collective scale of the epistemic vigilant attitude that is and should be taken toward our significant past may partially justify the use of the same epithet—“memory”—to refer to these different kinds of representations. (shrink)

Citation: Marina Christodoulou, “I Own therefore I Am. The Ontology of Property”, In Why Does What Exists Exist? Some Hypotheses on the Ultimate “Why” Question, edited by Mariano L. Bianca,Paolo Piccari. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021, pp. 169-182. Contributors: Mariano L. Bianca, Konstantinos Boultzis, Marina Christodoulou, Maurizio Ferraris, Marco G. Giammarchi, Enrico Guglielminetti, Roberta Lanfredini, Fabio Minazzi, Crister Nyberg, Paolo Piccari, Paolo Rossi. ISBN (10): 1-5275-6294-8; ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6294-3 -/- -------------- -/- The concept of Property is what attaches us (...) to Existence, Property, and Life, instead of non-existence, non-Being and Non-life (or Death). I occupy, I possess, I own, therefore I am, therefore I exist. I own a body, therefore, I am a being; I also own a self, therefore I am. -/- What exists exists because we have the notion, the concept, the idea, the habit of property and of ownership. There is something rather than nothing because we own it. Why private property? Because we have the notion, the concept, the idea, the habit of property and of ownership. There is private property because we need to own things, including ourselves, and we need to own because we need to sign and vice versa. (shrink)

This thesis is intended to analyze a mental phenomenon widely neglected in current philosophical discussions: personal memories. The first part presents a general framework to better understand what personal memories are, how we access our personal past and what we access about our personal past. Chapter 1 introduces traditional theories of memory: direct realism and representationalism in their different versions, as well as some objections. I defend here a particular form of representationalism that is based on the distinction between content, (...) intentional object and ontological object. Chapter 2 explores the possible contents of our personal memories, which prove to be heterogeneous, whereas chapter 3 analyses their possible intentional objects, with a special focus on past events. The second part of the thesis explores an aspect of our personal memories that was omitted in the first part: the senses in which our personal past is apprehended as personal. Chapter 4 examines the way in which the “self” intervenes in the construction of our personal memories. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the analysis of what seems to be the most subjective aspect of our memories, that is, the emotions and feelings of our past experiences. In these last two chapters, I analyze the different interactions that can take place between memories and emotions and defend the idea that there can be emotional memories that are reducible neither to a propositional memory nor an occurrent and present emotion. The overall intention of this thesis is twofold. First, I aim to show to the philosophical community that there is still a lot to be said and discussed about memory as a mental phenomenon. And second, I intend to emphasize the importance of bringing into the philosophical discussions about the mind ideas coming from different philosophical traditions as well as ideas and empirical data coming from scientific research. (shrink)

The present investigation concerns Reid’s explanation of how objects (be they real or nonexistent) are conceived. This paper shows that there is a deep-rooted tension in Reid’s understanding of conception: although the type of conception employed in perception is closely related to the one employed in imagination, three fundamental features distinguish perceptual conception (as the former will be referred to throughout this paper) from imaginative conception (as the latter will be called henceforth). These features would have been ascribed by Reid (...) himself to conception as involved in perception, but not to conception as involved in imagination. He should have recognized them as marking the former as a different kind from the latter, and he should not have hastily lumped perceptual and imaginative conceptions together. (shrink)

News about the first baby born after a mitochondrial replacement technique (MRT; specifically maternal spindle transfer) broke on September 27, 2016 and, in a matter of hours, went global. Of special interest was the fact that the mitochondrial replacement procedure happened in Mexico. One of the scientists behind this world first was quoted as having said that he and his team went to Mexico to carry out the procedure because, in Mexico, there are no rules. In this paper, we explore (...) Mexico's rule of law in relation to mitochondrial replacement techniques and show that, in fact, certain instances of MRTs are prohibited at the federal level and others are prohibited at the state level. According to our interpretation of the law, the scientists behind this first successful MRT procedure broke federal regulations regarding assisted fertilization research. (shrink)

Citation: Christodoulou, Marina. “Philosophical An(n)ales: Laideur Abject Dégoût...comme une allergie à l’Autre (féminin),” (trans. Bertrand Naivin) in Sur la laideur. [Actes du symposium On Ugliness, organizé par Lars Aagaard- Mogensen au Wassard Elea (Ascea, Italie) en juin 2016], edited by d Bertrand Naivin and Lars Aagaard-Mogensen (Paris: Editions Complicités, 20178, 97-109. ISSN: 9782351201435 -/- -------------------- -/- Laideur Abject Dégoût ... comme une allergie à l’Autre (féminin) Sur l’art et l’esthétique sexués. -/- Pourquoi le dégoût est-il (ou peut-il être considéré) (...) comme sexiste (phallocratique et misogyne): Une allergie à l’Autre. (shrink)

Citation:Christodoulou, Marina. “Technopolis as the Technologised Kingdom of God. Fun as Technology, Technology as Religion in the 21st Century. God sive Fun.” Cahiers d'études germaniques N° 74, 2018. La religion au XXIe siècle - Perpectives et enjeux de la discussion autour d'une société post-séculière. Études reunites par Sébastian Hüsch et Max Marcuzzi, 119-132. -/- -------- -/- Neil Postman starts his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1993)1 with a quote from Paul Goodman’s New Reformation: “Whether or not (...) it draws on new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not of science.” (Postman 1993: motto; Goodman 2010: 40). I would extend Postman’s Technopoly to Technopolis, to give it more of a presence in time and space. Hence, I will use the term Technopoly when I am referring to Postman; the term Technopolis is my own. -/- In his book From Faith to Fun: The Secularisation of Humour, Russel Heddendorf argues that humour is a technology (Heddendorf 2009: 32-34), as it is understood and theorized by Neil Postman in Technopoly. Russel Heddendorf also argues that “Technopoly” is a term correlated with Wittgenstein’s use of the term “worldview” (Weltanschauung) (Heddendorf 2009: 11). -/- I would like to draw on these thoughts to propose that Technopoly (or Technopolis) could be the secularized Kingdom of God, namely that Technology is the Religion of the 21st century, and that Fun is a paradigm of such a Technology / Technique. God is yet another technique or Technology of and in Technopoly. -/- The godless individual in the 21st century, I will argue, is as much a believer as the faithful in the Sacred Religion (term used in opposition to Secular or rather Technological or Technologized Religion, which is Fun). He believes in Fun (as a post-modern form of pleasure), as much as the believer believes, or more accurately, believed in God. In the 21st century, the faithful in Sacred Religion believes in a fun God, as opposed to the serious God of the past. Fun is turning into the Technologized Religion for all; for the faithful in Godly / Sacred Religion, as well for as the unfaithful. Fun (pleasure, humour) is the definitive qualia of 21st century pleasure. The mechanics of Fun make it absolutely functional for controlling people; as Aldous Huxley wrote in Brave New World, people “are controlled by inflicting pleasure” (cited in Heddendorf 2009: 158). Now, indulging in pleasure is having Fun. In the 21st century, nobody is unfaithful, nobody disputes God, because God has been manufactured into Fun. We are living in the most religious century of all. -/- The commodity of God, now inextricably blended into work and leisure ethics and culture, is as unavoidable as survival. You don’t work, you don’t survive, you don’t exist. You work, you are entitled to leisure, or free time – the time (“busy-time”) when you are busy is work. The free time of leisure (“fun-time”) is a time for fun (pleasure). The time dedicated to Fun is culturally (capitalistically) pre-defined; no moment is actually free, each moment that is sold as free is to be bought with Work Time tokens –which is money. Believe is Enjoy. Happiness, achieved through pleasure, and pleasure through Fun, and Life as Play, is the recipe for Teleology in the 21st century. -/- The Technological God (Fun), as the Sacred God before him, is sovereignty’s technique or a social “mode of release”: demonstrations, marches, petitions, freedom of speech, citizen and human rights vindications, are “modes of release”, so that the next day, feeling relieved and released that you are working for a better life and a better world, you can wake up cheerfully to walk to your workplace, feeling it will change because of your marching, or your petition, or your speech, or the mass you attended, or the prayer you said yesterday. Thus life continues unchanging, through postponing hope; the tension of the tragedy is always released (lysis) in catharsis: refreshment for the next day of work. Art, especially cinema, (namely, simulated life) follows the same cathartic principles as real life. Thus, you can keep coping, and hoping in the meantime is of much help. Religion, Art, Science, Therapy, and Technology are all technologies used to market life, sell it or lend it, and humans are buying it back. Fun is free to produce, and expensive to buy. (shrink)

Citation: Christodoulou, Marina. “Philosophical An(n)ales: Ugliness Abject Disgust ... as an allergy to the (Feminine) Other”, in Wassard Elea Rivista III, no 3 (giugno12,2016), 119-141. -/- -------- -/- Ugliness Abject Disgust ... as an allergy to the (Feminine) Other -/- Appendix: Towards a Philosophy of Poop The Anti-Aesthetics of Scat, the Philosophy of Disgust and the Scato- Libidinal Economy.

Citation: Christodoulou, Marina. “‘To be dead is an unthinkable anomaly’ Reversed Necropolitics and the Death Imaginary.” Lo Sguardo - rivista di filosofia N. 23, 2017 (I) - Reinventare il reale. Jean Baudrillard (2007-2017) a cura di Eleonora de Conciliis, Enrico Schirò, Daniela Angelucci, pp. 127-137. Articolo sottoposto a peer review. Ricevuto il 14/10/2016. Accettato il 12/01/2017. ISSN: 2036-6558 -/- --------- -/- The concept or the theory of Death in the thought of Jean Baudrillard is not given the particular attention (...) it needs. When one speaks of the thought of Baudrillard, one rarely will mention ‘death’ as one of the keywords of his corpus. I think, though, that it deserves such a key place, for three reasons. Firstly, because the theme of Death is a gargantuan concept in the history of Philosophy and it even emerges with the definition of Philosophy itself, since, at least, Plato. Every philosopher, more or less is preoccupied with it, as an archetypical necessity of both human culture and of philosophy in particular. It is always interesting to see how each philosopher or each person thinks on it, as their thoughts on Death are a departure point and an indication of their whole philosophical system or, for non-philosophers, of their whole way of life. Secondly, it is important to examine this theme in Baudrillard because it inseparably interconnects, explains, and is explained by all the other, key, and the less prominent themes in his philosophy. Baudrillard’s thinking might take new dimensions when viewed through his thoughts on Death. Finally, Baudrillard is considered a difficult thinker, because, unlike other philosophers, he grasps themes which people are used to seeing as the pre-occupation or within the realm of fiction, even science-fiction. I would like to show, using simple language, that his philosophy, especially surrounding the subject of Death, is completely naked of any metaphysical, romanticised, fantastic, or fiction-like properties; it is realistic and political. (shrink)

Higginbotham argued that certain linguistic items of English, when used in indirect discourse, necessarily trigger first-personal interpretations. They are: the emphatic reflexive pronoun and the controlled understood subject, represented as PRO. PRO is special, in this respect, due to its imposing obligatory control effects between the main clause and its subordinates ). Folescu & Higginbotham, in addition, argued that in Romanian, a language whose grammar doesn’t assign a prominent role to PRO, de se triggers are correlated with the subjunctive mood (...) of certain verbs. That paper, however, didn’t account for the grammatical diversity of the reports that display immunity to error through misidentification in Romanian: some of these reports are expressed by using de se triggers; others are not. Their IEM, moreover, is not systematically lexically controlled by the verbs, via their theta-roles; it is, rather, determined by the meaning of the verbs in question. Given the data from Romanian, I will argue, the phenomenon of IEM cannot be fully explained starting either from the syntactical or the lexical structure of a language. (shrink)

En aras del universalismo y en contra del totalitarismo, la ética discursiva ha mostrado con Jürgen Habermas un déficit práctico al negar a la filosofía moral la posibilidad de reflexionar sobre las condiciones alienantes del diálogo desde un ethos concreto. Este artículo analiza el modo en que la teoría de la resonancia formulada por Hartmut Rosa permite revitalizar el debate sobre las condiciones que pueden minar las bases para el diálogo en las sociedades aceleradas sin apoyarse en el concepto de (...) ethos, sino en el de modo de relacionarse con el mundo [Modus der Weltbeziehung]. (shrink)

Policies that require male-female sex comparisons in all areas of biomedical research conflict with the goal of improving health outcomes through context-sensitive individualization of medical care. Sex, like race, requires a rigorous, contextual approach in precision medicine. A “sex contextualist” approach to gender-inclusive medicine better aligns with this aim.

Thomas Reid believed that the human mind is well equipped, from infancy, to acquire knowledge of the external world, with all its objects, persons and events. There are three main faculties that are involved in the acquisition of knowledge: (original) perception, memory, and imagination. It is thought that we cannot understand how exactly perception works, unless we have a good grasp on Reid’s notion of perceptual conception (i.e., of the conception employed in perception). The present paper argues that the same (...) is true of memory, and it offers an answer to the question: what type of conception does it employ? (shrink)

Some Comments on de Melo-Martin and Harris.

Fear generalisation is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when fear that is elicited in response to a frightening stimulus spreads to similar or related stimuli. The practical harms of pathological fear generalisation related to trauma are well-documented, but little or no attention has been given so far to its epistemic harms. This paper fills this gap in the literature. It shows how the psychological phenomenon, when it becomes pathological, substantially curbs the epistemic agency of those who experience the fear that (...) generalizes, limiting their ability to respond to evidence, and substantially limiting their epistemic horizons. It is argued that when these epistemic harms are caused by wrongful actions and decisions of individuals or institutions, because the fear is elicited in response to a traumatic experience inflicted by them, the harms should be considered epistemic wrongs. The epistemic wrongs are closely akin to agential epistemic injustice, a variety of distributive epistemic injustice, and sometimes also involve epistemic exclusion. The paper thereby identifies a previously underexplored psychological mechanism that can be a vehicle through which both individuals and institutions can epistemically wrong others. The argument has implications for how both epistemic wrongs and epistemic injustice should be conceived, suggesting that both can occur without being caused by primarily epistemic flaws or errors, or a bad epistemic character. Finally, it highlights the advantage of taking a victim-centred approach to understanding epistemic harm. (shrink)

In a recent publication Tom Douglas and Katrien Devolder have proposed a new account of genetic parenthood, building on the work of Heidi Mertes. Douglas and Devolder’s account aims to solve, among other things, the question of who are the genetic parents of an individual created through somatic cell nuclear transfer (i.e. cloning): (a) the nuclear DNA provider or (b) the progenitors of the nuclear DNA provider. Such a question cannot be answered by simply appealing to the folk account of (...) genetic parenthood, according to which the genetic parents of an individual are those individuals who produced the egg and sperm, respectively, which fused to create the embryo. It cannot be so as in cloning there is no fertilization as such. In this article I critically examine Douglas and Devolder’s new account of genetic parenthood and demonstrate that it is vulnerable to counterexamples that exploit the lack of a condition specifying that genetic parents should cause a child’s coming into existence. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is Thomas Reid's anti-skepticism: our knowledge of the external world is justified. The justificatory process, in his view, starts with and relies upon one of the main faculties of the human mind: perception. Reid's theory of perception has been thoroughly studied, but there are some missing links in the explanatory chain offered by the secondary literature. In particular, I will argue that we do not have a complete picture of the mechanism of perception of (...) bodies. The present paper, relying, in part, on a particular theory in psychology – the feature integration theory of attention – will make a contribution in this regard. (shrink)

Stoic philosophers had to face the accusation of incoherence, self-contradiction and Paradoxes since ancient times. Plutarch in his Moralia writes against them; Cicero devotes a separate work on stoic paradoxes. Even in contemporary Literature there are still discussions on the possibility of such an incoherence and existence of paradoxes in the stoic theory. At first glance, stoic Cosmology gives the impression to both accept a kind of Determinism, and at the same time it undoubtedly argues for the moral agent’s freedom (...) of the Will. In pre-stoic or even other contemporary to Stoicism Philosophical Traditions, the definitions that these two terms/concepts are given, fairly accuse as incoherent any Theory that does not set them as “contraries”. Under these types of accusations, the stoic Cosmology and Theory of the Freedom of the Will is often to be included. This phenomenal self-contradiction inside the Principles of Stoicism becomes even more obvious in Epictetus, a philosopher of the Late Stoa. He is interested in practical ethics, thus the phenomenal contradiction gets more lucid. This would have augmented the criticism of the Stoic philosophy for incoherence, if Epictetus had not made his main philosophical aim/target : the clarification of how an agent’s Will can be Free inside a Universe ruled by Fate/Destiny ; namely, a Universe merely Determined by Nature’s/God’s Will. Epictetus’ originality appears in the way he interrelates the concept of Freedom of the Will with the concept of Destiny and Determinism, in order to accomplish their simultaneous co-existence. This approach guards him against being easily accused for incoherence and self-contradiction. Through the unique way he understands and defines the Moral Agency, which is the agent’s internal state/condition/disposition, he steers towards an integrated, accomplished, strong and coherent line of argument. This sturdy declaration is able to support the weight of the Consent to a Free Will, and thus a certain kind Freedom of the moral agent. The excellence of this line of argument is that it can bear also the burden of the Consent to the phenomenally contrary concept of Determinism and Destiny. The elements used to the construction of this argument, which is stretched throughout the whole epictetean corpus can be summarised to a few key concepts, which are: the things which are in our power and the things which are not in our power, the concept of Freedom. These concepts work towards his philosophical targeting, because of the special definition he gives them. Axiomatically Epictetus states that in order for man to be free, it is necessary to be liberated from what the body forces him to do. Desires, passions and beliefs are considered as elements which are external to the moral agent. The moral agent “shrinks” into the Will. Thus man has the capability to free himself from anything external to his Will and therefore to harmonise his own Will to the Will of Nature/God; namely, to will what Nature/God wills and thus never conflict to the external facts. Consequently, Epictetus’ solution, is to include in the category of τά οὐκ ἐφ' ἡμῖν anything that he defines as external to the prohairesis: the desires, beliefs, passions and in general anything the body entails, the external facts. Thus the prohairesis, remains unhindered and it is completely depended on man’s power ; as characteristically Epictetus writes, “not even Zeus himself can overpower” the prohairesis. -/- Dissertation for the MSc Ancient Philosophy (2008-2009) at The University of Edinburgh, supervised by Inna Kupreeva. (shrink)

Against those who dismiss Kant's project in the "Religion" because it provides a Pelagian understanding of salvation, this paper offers an analysis of the deep structure of Kant's views on divine justice and grace showing them not to conflict with an authentically Christian understanding of these concepts. The first part of the paper argues that Kant's analysis of these concepts helps us to understand the necessary conditions of the Christian understanding of grace: unfolding them uncovers intrinsic relations holding between God's (...) justice and grace. Parts two and three provide an analysis of two concepts of grace used by Kant. Getting clear on their differences is the key to understanding why Kant's account is not Pelagian. (shrink)

El artículo intenta recuperar la figura de Dora Benjamin como referente de la crítica social, reconstruyendo las huellas de aquello que el silencio de su imagen posibilita interpretar.

La Dra. Marina Trakas, coordinadora del dossier "Memoria y emoción" de la Revista de Psicología de la UNLP presenta los contenidos del mismo: -/- Trakas - Memoria y emoción: introducción al dossier Ramirez, Ruetti et al. - Memoria emocional en niñas y niños de diferentes condiciones socio-ambientales Saive - Reír para recordar: mejora de la memoria en relación con el humor Diaz Abrahan, Justel et al. - Memoria emocional. Una revisión sistemática de la capacidad modulatoria de la música, de (...) la actividad física y del bilingüismo Bonilla, Forcato et al. - Mejora de las memorias maladaptativas durante el sueno y la vigilia: una visión interdisciplinaria Fierro - Eros el memorioso Trakas - Dimensiones de análisis de los recuerdos personales como recuerdos afectivos Vieira Lopes - Sentimientos existenciales y memoria corporal: dos casos en la filosofía de la psiquiatría . (shrink)

This paper explores Kant's concept of the highest good and the postulate of the existence of God arising from it. Kant has two concepts of the highest good standing in tension with one another, an immanent and a transcendent one. I provide a systematic exposition of the constituents of both variants and show how Kant’s arguments are prone to confusion through a conflation of both concepts. I argue that once these confusions are sorted out Kant’s claim regarding the need to (...) postulate God’s existence from a moral point of view makes much more sense. (shrink)

In support of Descartes’ epistemology, Lex Newman advances the ‘Non-atheistic-knowledge- thesis’, i.e., indefeasible knowledge cannot be gained unless the existence of God is proved. Here I expound the ‘non-atheistic-thesis-of-Cartesian-metaphysics’, which, unlike Newman’s, refers to how four Cartesian metaphysical conclusions require the existence of God. To test whether such conclusions need divine existence, we may ask what would happen if God did not play any decisive role in the Meditations. As I argue, four unpalatable consequences would follow for Cartesian metaphysics, which (...) would ruin Descartes’ plan to refute the skeptic and the atheist alike. (shrink)

La investigación reciente en psicología cognitiva sobre la memoria emocional ha estudiado las distintas formas en que las emociones afectan a la memoria, sin profundizar no obstante en la comprensión de la manera en que los aspectos emocionales, afectivos y mnemónicos se encuentran estrechamente entrelazados en el contenido mismo de un acto de reminiscencia. En este artículo propongo un marco conceptual de análisis que nos permite entender los recuerdos personales como recuerdos esencialmente afectivos, y que se articula en torno a (...) dos variables continuas e independientes: por un lado, la intencionalidad del recuerdo, es decir, el objeto hacia el cual el recuerdo está dirigido, que puede ser descriptiva o evaluativa; por el otro, la perspectiva afectiva del recuerdo, que puede fluctuar desde la perspectiva de primera persona hasta la perspectiva de tercera persona. Las dos dimensiones son analizadas en profundidad y las limitaciones de este marco y las futuras líneas de investigación son igualmente presentadas. (shrink)

La metáfora de la memoria como “viaje mental en el tiempo” (“mental time travel” en inglés) ha tenido una gran influencia en la ciencia cognitiva de la memoria así como también en la filosofía de la memoria contemporánea. A pesar de su relevancia, no ha habido ninguna discusión teórica real ni sobre el significado de la metáfora en sí misma ni sobre su adecuación para dar cuenta de los recuerdos de experiencias pasadas. Este artículo trata de llenar este vacío al (...) examinar con más detalle la metáfora del “viaje mental en el tiempo”, centrándose más específicamente en los problemas que dicha noción presenta. Si la metáfora del “viaje mental en el tiempo” pretende referir no solo a una facultad o sistema cerebral sino también a una experiencia subjetiva particular, como así ha sido sugerido en la literatura, no es de por sí evidente que sea compatible con las nociones de (re)construcción y simulación con las que se la asocia frecuentemente, ni que describa de manera fehaciente la fenomenología de todo recuerdo del pasado personal. Si, por el contrario, sólo se refiere a una facultad o sistema cerebral y no pretende dar cuenta de la fenomenología del recuerdo, el uso de dicho término parece perder todo sentido para nombrar dicha facultad. A pesar de su relevancia, la metáfora del “viaje mental en el tiempo” no se ha impuesto como paradigma único: otras metáforas distintas continúan guiando actualmente programas más o menos fructíferos de investigación de la memoria. El artículo concluye que aunque dicha metáfora fue beneficiosa en su momento para la ciencia y la filosofía de la memoria, el examen minucioso de dicha noción sugiere que no constituye realmente una buena metáfora de la memoria sobre las experiencias pasadas, por lo que debería ser abandonada. (shrink)

(written in 2017) According to Dorothea Debus (2007), all emotional aspects related to an act of remembering are present and new emotional responses to the remembered past event. This is a common conception of the nature of the emotional aspect of personal memories, if not explicitly defended then at least implicitly accepted in the literature. In this article, I first criticize Debus’ arguments and demonstrate that she does not give us valid reasons to believe that all the emotional aspects related (...) to a memory are present and new emotional responses to that past event. I then criticize Debus’ thesis tout court for being a direct consequence of assuming a particular conceptualization of the nature of emotions: emotions as physiological changes. Finally, based on a different conceptualization of emotions that focuses on their relational nature, I propose an alternative framework for analyzing the different possible emotional aspects of our personal memories. This leads me to conclude, contrary to Debus, that some emotional aspects of our memories are not occurrent emotions but are better conceived as quasi-emotions. (shrink)

What does it take for a subject to experience a personal memory as being her own? According to Fernández’ (2019) model of endorsement, this particular phenomenal quality of our memories, their “sense of mineness”, can be explained in terms of the experience of the mnemonic content as veridical. In this article, I criticize this model for two reasons: (a) the evidence that is used by Fernández to ground his theoretical proposal is dubious; and more importantly, (b) the endorsement model does (...) not accommodate many non-pathological everyday memories that preserve their sense of mineness, but whose veridicality is explicitly denied, suspected, not automatically endorsed, or neither denied nor endorsed. Finally, I sketch two alternative explanations: one also problematic, the other one more promising, and present some normative advantages of the latter. This also displays the undesirability of the endorsement model from a normative perspective. (shrink)

The notion of affective memory was first introduced by Théodule Ribot (1894), giving rise to a debate about its existence at the beginning of the 20th century. Although Vernon Lee did not directly take part in this discussion, she conceptualized this notion in a quite precise way, mainly in her book Music and Its Lovers (1932), clarifying the sometimes obscure formulations made by previous authors. In this short encyclopedic entry, I present Lee's characterization of affective memory.