Excerpt: In this essay I explore the nature of the necessity of historical development in Nietzsche’s genealogy of Judeo-Christian moral values. I argue that the progression of moral stages in Nietzsche’s study is ordered in such a way that the failure of each stage is logically and structurally necessary, that each failure structures the resultant system or paradigm, but that the historical manifestation of moral paradigms coinciding with predicted or projected theoretical structures is contingent upon a multitude of other historical (...) factors. Therefore, the systematic internal failures of moral stages allow for, but do not cause, successive events. (shrink)

This Handbook contains forty essays by an international team of experts on the antecedents, the content, and the reception of the Dionysian corpus, a body of writings falsely ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, a convert of St Paul, but actually written about 500 AD. The first section contains discussions of the genesis of the corpus, its Christian antecedents, and its Neoplatonic influences. In the second section, studies on the Syriac reception, the relation of the Syriac to the original Greek, (...) and the editing of the Greek by John of Scythopolis are followed by contributions on the use of the corpus in such Byzantine authors as Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Theodore the Studite, Niketas Stethatos, Gregory Palamas, and Gemistus Pletho. In the third section attention turns to the Western tradition, represented first by the translators John Scotus Eriugena, John Sarracenus, and Robert Grosseteste and then by such readers as the Victorines, the early Franciscans, Albert the Great, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Dante, the English mystics, Nicholas of Cusa, and Marsilio Ficino. The contributors to the final section survey the effect on Western readers of Lorenzo Valla's proof of the inauthenticity of the corpus and the subsequent exposure of its dependence on Proclus by Koch and Stiglmayr. The authors studied in this section include Erasmus, Luther and his followers, Vladimir Lossky, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Jacques Derrida, as well as modern thinkers of the Greek Church. Essays on Dionysius as a mystic and a political theologian conclude the volume. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on the circular relationship that, in his 1998 encyclical, Jean Paul II argued there is between faith and reason. I first note that this image of circularity needs some explaining, because it is not clear where exactly the circular process begins and ends. I then argue that an explanation can be found in Aquinas’s reflection on the gift of understanding. Aquinas referred to the virtue of faith as caused by God, which promotes human reason, (...) and this in turn strengthens the certainty of faith. (shrink)

[First published in Italian as: “L’irreligione e lo spettatore imparziale nel sistema morale di Adam Smith”, in Rivista di Filosofia 3 (3):375-403 (2005). -/- Translated by E. Lecaldano.] -/- A number of commentators on Smith’s philosophy have observed that the relationship between his moral theory and his theological beliefs is “exceedingly difficult to unravel.” The available evidence, as generally presented, suggests that although Smith was not entirely orthodox by contemporary standards, he has no obvious or significant irreligious commitments or orientation. (...) Contrary to this view of things, this essay argues that behind the veneer of orthodoxy that covers Smith’s discussion in The Theory of the Moral Sentiments there are significant irreligious themes present in his work. -/- . (shrink)

Recent Carnap scholarship suggests that the received view of the Carnap-Quine analyticity debate is importantly mistaken. It has been suggested that Carnap’s analyticity distinction is immune from Quine’s criticisms. This is either because Quine did not understand Carnap’s use of analytic-ity, or because Quine did not appreciate that, rather than dispelling dog-mas, he was merely offering an alternate framework for philosophy. It has also been suggested that ultimately nothing of substance turns on this dis-pute. I am sympathetic to these reassessments (...) and their rejection of the re-ceived view, but argue that they fail to pay proper attention to Carnap’s metaphysical deflationism. For it is there that Quine’s arguments ultimately make contact with Carnap, undermining his metaphysical deflationism. Moreover, the viability of deflationism is directly related to the viability of Carnap’s view of philosophy as methodologically distinct from science. Hence, Quine’s criticisms make contact with the deepest aspects of Carnap’s views. (shrink)

In this brief review it is not possible to do full justice to this lively and lucidly present- ed study. It is fair to say, I think, that the considerable mer- its of this work rest primarily with its intelligent and reliable selection of material, most of which is already available and familiar. This study does not aim to challenge any orthodox- ies or present new material of some significant kind. Rasmus- sen does not need to do this since his (...) real concern is to tell a story about two great thinkers in an engaging manner – a task which he achieves with great success. This is a book that scholars will thoroughly enjoy and appreciate and which will also find many appreciative readers well beyond these boundaries. (shrink)

In this brief review it is not possible to do full justice to this lively and lucidly presented study. It is fair to say, I think, that the considerable merits of this work rest primarily with its intelligent and reliable selection of material, most of which is already available and familiar. This study does not aim to challenge any orthodoxies or present new material of some significant kind. Rasmussen does not need to do this since his real concern is to (...) tell a story about two great thinkers in an engaging manner – a task which he achieves with great success. This is a book that scholars will thoroughly enjoy and appreciate and which will also find many appreciative readers well beyond these boundaries. (shrink)

In this paper we briefly examine and evaluate Quine’s physicalism. On the supposition, in accordance with Quine’s views, that there can be no change of any sort without a physical change, we argue that this point leaves plenty of room to understand and accept a limited autonomy of the special sciences and of other domains of disciplinary and common-sense inquiry and discourse. The argument depends on distinguishing specific, detailed programs of reduction from the general Quinean strategy of reduction by explication. (...) We argue that the details of the relations of particular sciences, disciplines and domains of discourse depend on empirical evidence and empirical-theoretical developments and that the generalized approach of reduction by explication is also subject to related empirical-theoretical constraints. So understood, physicalism lacks much of the controversial force and many of the implications sometimes associated with it. (shrink)

Is it possible to establish a line of research that brings Gabriel Marcel and Jean-Paul Sartre closer together? With this article, we will positively support this idea, by distancing ourselves from the overly rigid interpretations that exclusively focus on antinomic elements sliding into a reductionist and nowadays “canonical” presentation of the relationship between these philosophers. Beyond the undeniable and, fortunately, unmediated differences between the two philosophers, this article aims to investigate their positions regarding the concept of “relationship”. In doing (...) so, we will highlight how Gabriel Marcel’s “coesse” and Jean-Paul Sartre’s “being-for-others” have numerous points of contact that place both philosophers, beyond their personal positions in the religious sphere, within the common ground of “existentialism”. (shrink)

Ang Noli Me Tangere at El Filibusterismo ay mga nobelang isinulat ni Dr. Jose P. Rizal na sumasalamin sa kalagayan ng mga Pilipino noong panahon ng mga Español. Ikinubli ni Rizal ang mga di-makatáong pagtrato ng mga Español sa mga itinuring na Indio sa pamamagitan ng mga pangyayari at mga karakter sa kaniyang dalawang akda. Mula sa Teorya ng Moral na Pag-unlad (Theory of Moral Development) ng isang Amerikanong Sikolohistang si Lawrence Kohlberg ay sinuri ng papel na ito ang 10 (...) tagpo na nagpapakita ng katungkulang moral sa dalawang nobela gámit ang Antas at Yugto ng Moral na Pag-unlad ni Kohlberg (Kohlberg’s Levels and Stages of Moral Development). Mula sa ginawang pagsusuri, napagtanto ng papel na ito na gumamit si Rizal ng estratehiya upang ipakita na ang aksiyong isinagawa ng ahente sa bawat tagpo ay taliwas sa kaniyang kabuoang moralidad, bagaman ang pamamaraang ito ay nagdulot sa mga mambabása ng Noli Me Tangere at El Filibusterismo ng iba’t ibang interpretasyon at pagkaunawa sa mga isinulat ng may-akda. Mapanghámon ang mga nobela ni Rizal na sumusubok sa tradisyonal na kaugalian at panuntunan ng Pilipinas maging sa pagkukunwari ng lipunang Pilipino. Malaki ang naging gampanin ng nabuong tema na sumisimbolo sa mga isyung panlipunang nais palutangin ni Rizal. Gayunpaman, dahil sa mataas na pangangatwirang moral na nakapaloob sa kaniyang mga gawa, nararapat na gamítin ito hindi lámang bílang materyal sa pagaaral ng Filipino at sa mga kaugnay na larang, kundi pati rin sa pag-aaral ng kritisismo sa politika at lipunan, maging sa pag-aaral ng etika at moralidad, partikular na sa konteksto ng Pilipinas. (shrink)

Obiettivo di questo articolo sarà presentare l’analisi fenomenologica e teoretica che Sartre propone del concetto di malafede, a partire dal romanzo La Nausea fino all’opera L’essere e il nulla. Ricostruendo il procedimento sartriano, che dall’atteggiamento interrogativo dell’uomo di fronte all’essere porta alla posizione del non-essere, giungeremo alla libertà e all’angoscia, quali caratteri costitutivi dell’essenza umana. Il tentativo di fuggire dalla libertà, a cui per Sartre siamo condannati, e dall’angoscia che da essa deriva, condurrà l’uomo sartriano all’autoinganno, ad una vita inautentica… (...) alla malafede. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the rule of metaphor in Paul Ricoeur's philosophy of language. In his MultiDisciplinary Studies in the Creation of Meaning in Language (1975), the French philosopher shows the fundamental power of human language in constructing the world we perceive. He reveals the processes by which linguistic imagination creates and recreates meaning through metaphor. He develops a "linguistic philosophy of freedom," and a hermeneutics of the subject based on human capabilities. According to Ricoeur, to exist is to (...) act: speaking, doing, telling, and assuming responsibility for the act committed. The very "being" of human beings is to act and the effort to be. In this perspective, the human interiority is considered as dynamic production (enérgeia, conatus): it is a complex ontology of homo capax based on the human freedom and possibilities of language. Being as act and potentiality is the dominant meta-category that governs Ricoeur's philosophical anthropology, widely developed in the work Oneself as Another (1990). (shrink)

Horwich dà una bella analisi di Wittgenstein (W) ed è uno studioso W leader, ma a mio parere, tutti non sono al di sotto di un pieno apprezzamento, come spiego a lungo in questa recensione e molti altri. Se non si capisce W (e preferibilmente anche Searle) allora non vedo come si possa avere più di una comprensione superficiale della filosofia e del pensiero di ordine superiore e quindi di tutti i comportamenti complessi (psicologia, sociologia, antropologia, storia, letteratura, società). In (...) poche parole, W ha dimostrato che quando hai dimostrato come una frase viene usata nel contesto di interesse, non c'è più nulla da dire. Inizierò con alcune citazioni degne di nota e poi darò quelle che penso siano le considerazioni minime necessarie per capire Wittgenstein, la filosofia e il comportamento umano. La prima si potrebbe notare che mettere "meta" davanti a qualsiasi parola dovrebbe essere sospetto. W ha osservato ad esempio, che la metamatematica è matematica come qualsiasi altra. L'idea che possiamo uscire dalla filosofia (cioè la psicologia descrittiva del pensiero di ordine superiore) è di per sé una profonda confusione. Un'altra irritazione qui (e per tutta la scrittura accademica negli ultimi 4 decenni) è il costante sessismo linguistico inverso di "lei" e "suo" e "lei" o "lui/ lei" ecc., dove "loro" e "loro" e "loro" farebbero bene. Allo stessomodo, l'uso della parola francese "repertorio" in cui l'inglese "repertorio" farà abbastanza bene. La carenza principale è il fallimento completo (anche se molto comune) di impiegare quello che vedo come la vista di due sistemi estremamente potente e intuitiva del quadro di HOT e Searle che ho delineato sopra. Questo è particolarmente toccante nel capitolo sul significato p111 et seq. (soprattutto nelle note a piè di pagina 2-7), dove nuotiamo in acqua molto fangosa senza la struttura di vero automatizzato solo S1, proposizionale disposizionale S2, COS ecc. Si può anche ottenere una migliore vista dell'interno e dell'esterno leggendo ad esempio, Johnston o Budd (vedi le mie recensioni). Horwich però fa molti commenti incisivi. Mi è piaciuto soprattutto il suo riassunto dell'importazione della posizione anti-teorica di W su p65. Ha bisogno di dare più enfasi a 'On Certainty', recentemente oggetto di grande sforzo di Daniele Moyal- Sharrock, Coliva e altri e riassunto nei miei recenti articoli. Horwich è di prim'ordine e il suo lavoro vale la pena. Si spera che lui (e tutti) studierà Searle e un po 'di psicologia moderna così come Hutto, Read, Hutchinson, Stern, Moyal-Sharrock, Stroll, Hacker e Baker ecc per raggiungere una vasta visione moderna del comportamento. La maggior parte dei loro documenti sono su academia dot edu e philpapers dot org etc. Egli dà uno dei più bei riassunti di dove una comprensione di Wittgenstein ci lascia che io abbia mai visto. "Non ci deve essere alcun tentativo di spiegare la nostra attività linguistico/concettuale (PI 126) come nella riduzione dell'aritmetica di Frege alla logica; nessun tentativo di dargli basi epistemologiche (PI 124) come nei resoconti basati sul significato di una conoscenza a priori; nessun tentativo di caratterizzarne le forme idealizzate (PI 130) come nelle logiche del senso; nessun tentativo di riformarlo (PI 124, 132) come nella teoria degli errori di Mackie o nell'intuizione di Dummett; nessun tentativo di snellirla (PI 133) come nel racconto dell'esistenza di Quine; nessun tentativo di renderlo più coerente (PI 132) come nella risposta di Tarski ai paradossi bugiar; e nessun tentativo di renderlo più completo (PI 133) come nel sistemare le questioni di identità personale per bizzarri scenari ipotetici di 'teletrasporto'." Infine, lasciatemi suggerire che con la prospettiva che ho incoraggiato qui, W è al centro della filosofia contemporanea e della psicologia e non è oscura, difficile o irrilevante, ma scintillante, profonda e cristallina e che permane lo è mancare una delle più grandi avventure intellettualipossibili. Coloro che desiderano un quadro aggiornato completo per il comportamento umano dalla moderna vista a due systems possono consultare il mio libro 'La struttura logica dellafilosofia, psicologia, Mind e il linguaggio in Ludwig Wittgenstein e John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Coloro che sono interessati a più dei miei scritti possono vedere 'TalkingMonkeys--Filosofia, Psicologia, Scienza, Religione e Politica su un Pianeta Condannato--Articoli e Recensioni 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) e Suicidal Utopian Delusions nel 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

Analysing Cassirer's positions in the Nachruf dedicated to Natorp (1925) and in the third volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1929), I will try in this short paper to outline the core, merits, and limitations of Natorp's psychology in Cassirer's interpretation. In doing so, I will emphasise three elements: 1. the cornerstones of Natorpian psychology, which for Cassirer represent Natorp's main contribution to the history of ideas; 2. the thematic unity of Natorp's philosophical production; 3. the fundamental continuity between (...) Natorp's research and that of Cassirer. These three aspects are interwoven and belong in some way to the inner development of Marburg Neo-Kantianism. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present Paul Natorp’s position in the debate over the allocation of chairs in philosophy to experimental psychology. Natorp triggered the public controversy within psychology when an experimental psychologist, Eric Jaensch, was awarded the chair of Hermann Cohen in 1912. Natorp published an editorial in the «Frankfurter Zeitung» and in the following year, 1913, submitted a petition for the establishment of new chairs for experimental psychology in Germany. In this way, Natorp hoped to (...) prevent the abolition of “pure” philosophy from German universities. When the controversy began, Natorp wrote another essay, Philosophie und Psychologie. Natorp’s article aimed to clarify the logical domains of philosophy and psychology and to present his philosophical psychology as a solution to their conceptual overlap. Natorp’s article is also important for Natorpforschung because it was the last time that Natorp discussed his psychological point of view, only to apparently abandon his project of a philosophical psychology. (shrink)

In questo contributo del 2008 si dimostra, attraverso un confronto con le posizioni di Max Scheler, che Alsberg con il disimpegno corporeo (Körperausschaltung) non mira a esonerare l’organismo (nel senso della Entlastung di Gehlen). Per Alsberg l’evoluzione sociale avviene attraverso utensili, ma l’utensile non si limita a essere un’appendice del corpo, bensì rappresenta una logica estranea a quella del corpo. La Körperausschaltung è il killer del corpo. L’errore di Spencer è quello di non comprendere che un’evoluzione basata su utensili non (...) è semplicemente “sovra-organica”, ma piuttosto “extraorganica”. Extra-organico per Alsberg significa che l’utensile è al di fuori della logica del corpo. Ed è proprio l’autonomia dell’utensile dalla biologia a permettere di risolvere il paradosso della duplicità costitutiva dell’uomo: l’essere il motore di un’evoluzione extra-organica che produce contemporaneamente involuzione organica. Il “disimpegno organico” che libera l’uomo dal bisogno è possibile solo perché il problema dell’adattamento e dell’evoluzione viene spostato sul piano extra-organico: tale spostamento è ciò che contraddistingue l’uomo da tutti gli altri esseri viventi, quindi il principio costitutivo dell’esser umano. L' Ausschaltung, come disattivazione del corpo (dal verbo tedesco auschalten, nel senso di spegnere, ad es. una macchina, la luce ecc.) diventa pertanto il principio ultimo per comprendere l'umano nella sua interezza e non solo l'uomo della modernità (l'homo faber). L'eccezionale testo di Alsberg rimarrà praticamente sconosciuto, tuttavia con eccezioni di rilievo: già negli anni '20 ha un impatto decisivo su Max Scheler e sul progetto di fondazione dell'antropologia filosofica. Successivamente, ma con esiti opposti, su Gehlen. Il concetto di Körperausschaltung viene ripreso anche da Dieter Claessens, da Hans Blumenberg e infine da Sloterdijk. (shrink)

Ricoeur’s application of phenomenology to the existential human condition brings us to an understanding of human freedom in the light of an embodied human existence that is acting or willing or choosing freely, voluntarily, and responsibly. Human will is not therefore a concept or an abstract manipulated by the powers of the intellectuals. Rather, it is about man’s action, his agency, his being a doer, the one willing, instead of being just the one thinking or loving. Likewise, Ricoeur’s recourse to (...) existentialism sheds light to our faulted condition. We could say of a negation of man as a willing being: while man is capable of willing, he wills with recognition of his limitations. He always wills within the bounds of his finitude. Indeed, there is always this tension yet there is also this fusion. Nonetheless, it is possible for man to live in this contradiction as contradictions. Man is harmonic in contradictions. His will is always his ability, not his in- or dis-ability. (shrink)

Rousseau argues that holding the talented in high public esteem leads the less talented to esteem their natural virtues less highly and therefore to neglect the cultivation of these virtues. D’Holbach’s response to Rousseau indicates a sense in which esteeming talent can avoid these detrimental consequences. The starting point of d’Holbach’s defense of the sciences and arts is an analysis of the impact that despotic regimes have on esteeming talent. He argues that there is not only a problem of over-valuing (...) talent but also a problem of under-valuing talent. These considerations form the background for his conception of valuing talent in the right way. The phenomenon of political deception in despotic regimes indicates a sense in which talent can be regarded as a tool for solving a pressing political problem: Genuinely estimable uses of talent are those that oppose despotism and support republican virtues. Esteeming such talent does not lead to a loss of esteem and self-esteem for ordinary people because republican virtues themselves are a source of esteem and self-esteem. Comparison with some aspects of the response of d’Holbach’s friend, Claude-Adrien Helvétius, to Rousseau will accentuate the specific strengths of d’Holbach’s argument. (shrink)

On September 13, 1998, Zygmunt Bauman was honoured with the Theodor W. Adorno-Preis which the free city of Frankfurt am Main awards each year in the deconsecrated church of St. Paul, a highly symbolic place where the first democratic parliament sessions were held during the revolution of 1848-49. Not without surprise, in his thanksgiving speech, he de-clared that he felt like a “disciple of Adorno”. The intention of this essay is to reconstruct Bauman's real intellectual debt, through an analysis (...) of his writings and those of Adorno, trying to demonstrate that, in spite of Bauman's compliant criticism, it is an apparent legacy. (shrink)

The paper shows that Natorp's philosophical system is already in its origins a logical scheme for a philosophy of culture. The paper focuses on Natorp's 1887 work on the objective and subjective foundations of knowledge.

La definizione di vita che il premio Nobel per la medicina Paul Nurse propone nel suo libro Che cosa è la vita? (Mondadori), qui recensito, si alimenta di cinque concetti fondamentali: cellula, gene, evoluzione per selezione naturale, processo chimico ed informazione.

The dissemination of Tommaso Campanella’s thought in the seventeenth-century Dutch context was not only due to his concern with the war involving the Netherlands. His works, indeed, were referred to by scholars interested in establishing a new philosophy and natural history. Johannes De Raey and Paul Veezaerdt took up some of his perspectives on the history of Aristotelian philosophy, and dealt with the theological implications of his arguments.

1. The most original discovery in Beauvoir’s book is one more Columbus’s egg, namely that it is far from evident that a woman is a woman. That is, she discovers that a woman is the result of a process that made so that she is like she is. The paper discusses two aspects of the so-to-say ‘ideology’ inspiring the work. The first is its ideology in the proper, Marxian sense. My claim is that the work still pays a heavy price (...) to the dominating ideology. It leaves still too much unquestionedof what was assumed at the time to be obvious, necessary, and unchanging. This ballast depends firstly on the inherited prevailing climate of opinion, corresponding to a situation of alienation, producing two distorted views of the male and female gender. On the other hand, it depends on an unquestioned legacy from the modern episteme (in Foucault’s sense of the word) carrying presupposed Cartesian dualism. The other side of the work’s ideology, that is, the positive program presented or better the utopia it formulates is less innovative than it could be, In a few passages, where she seems to make use of suggestions from Merleau-Ponty, she points at a view where the bodily and emotional dimension is rescued from its negation in the male-dominated Capitalist society. Still, these suggestions are forgotten in the bulk of the work. -/- 2. The making of a philosophical work does not depend just on the kind of philosophical influences behind it. A book is also the product of an author with a story living in one society at a given time of social history. In this case, the book was written in the afterwar time when women were pushed back home again from the wartime labor market and when several of the goals reached by the first phase of feminist movements had gone lost in several European countries under Fascist or semi-fascist regimes and were being eroded in America by the reactionary climate of McCarthyism. It was a book written by an intellectual young woman in almost total isolation. These circumstances account for some more naïve suggestions from work: for ex., the idea that the alternative to the strategy once adopted by nineteenth-century emancipationist movements should be an individual inner process of transformation confined within the boundaries of one woman’s consciousness, or also, the idea that the goal of women’s liberation should be to bring all women to a condition similar of Simone de Beauvoir herself who, as an educated woman, earning her life by her work, and living in an allegedly equal state with an enlightened man (Jean-Paul Sartre!) in a relationship free from constraints (an unmarried couple!), was already exemplifying what a liberated woman’s life would be. -/- 3. The reconstruction of the idea of femininity is still the most fruitful part of the work. It rejects the notion of femininity as an essence depending on biology or other factors and explores the making of this image as a result of a condition made of the social and economic state of affairs but as revived and actively mirrored through and by the consciousness of the very subjects suffering an oppressive situation. And the main novelty is the ‘discovery’ of asymmetry between the self-image of the male and the (self)-image of the woman, an asymmetry depending on the fact that the woman sees herself through the other’s eyes. -/- 4. Later feminist writers such as Shulamit Firestone remarked that 'The Second Sex' heavily depended on several key-ideas from Sartre existential ontology. One crucial aspect is accepting the mind-body dualistic framework without any suspicion that such dualism could have been itself a projection of the basic experience of the male-female duality. I suggest that the philosophical legacy inherited from Sartre is on occasion an asset for Beauvoir’s innovative existential analysis of the feminine ‘condition,’ but on several occasions, it creates unnecessary obstacles for her project of a new comprehension of the feminine ‘situation,’ aimed at rescuing women from an 'inauthentic' self-definition. -/- 5. The first among these poisoned gifts is Sartre’s idea of the individual as pure freedom and project. Merleau-Ponty’s criticism is well-known: Sartre draws a picture of the world as containing no more than ‘human beings and things,’ thus denying any substance to social relations, institutions, and culture. -/- 6. The second is Sartre’s reconstruction of dialectics, understood as dialectics without synthesis. This is an enlightening tool when used to describe conflicts, in so far as it accounts for the emergence of the ‘other’ as what is excluded. But it becomes a boomerang when used to interpret any kind of relationship, leading to equate inter-subjectivity with conflict. -/- 7. Suggestions coming from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach of positive value of the bodily dimension as such, and hence of the feminine body, are evoked here and there but never fully spelled out. The most shocking consequence of acceptance of the Cartesian or Sartrean dualist view is an almost total de-evaluation of sexuality, understood as an activity involving just one tiny part of the human body, going with the idea that overcoming the oppression of women implies de-empathizing biological differences that are after all tiny and devoid of value. Besides, Beauvoir falls back into the trap of grounding claims of equality between men and women on the assumption that biological differences are of limited relevance. The eventual reason for such a step back is the distorting Cartesian mirror into which Beauvoir still looks in the vain hope of discovering a disembodied self as the (Cartesian) subject of an impossible kind of liberation.The first among these poisoned gifts is Sartre’s idea of the individual as pure freedom and project. Merleau-Ponty’s criticism is well-known: Sartre draws a picture of the world as containing no more than ‘human beings and things’, thus denying any substance to social relations, institutions and culture. The second is Sartre’s reconstruction of dialectics, understood as a dialectic without a synthesis. This view of dialectics is an enlightening tool when used to describe conflicts. It may account for the emergence of the ‘other’ as what is excluded. However, it becomes a boomerang when used to interpret any relationship, leading to equate inter-subjectivity with conflict. Suggestions coming from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach would tend to admit that the bodily dimension as such has a positive value, and hence the feminine bodily dimension is not just indifferent, but instead gives women a point of view on the world different from the male point of view. These suggestions, yet, are evoked here and there but never fully spelt out. The most shocking consequence of acceptance of the Cartesian or Sartrean dualist view is an almost total de-evaluation of sexuality, understood as an activity involving just one tiny part of the human body, going with the idea that overcoming the oppression of women implies understressing biological differences that are after all tiny and devoid of value. Furthermore, Beauvoir falls back into the trap of grounding claims of equality between men and women on the assumption that physical differences are of limited relevance. The eventual reason for such step back is the distorting Cartesian mirror into which Beauvoir still looks in the vain hope of discovering a disembodied self as the (Cartesian) subject of an impossible kind of liberation. -/- . (shrink)

A review of a collection of papers by Paul Ricoeur edited by Domenico Jervolino. The collection highlights Ricoeur's journey from the reflexive philosophy to analytic philosophy through hermeneutics.

I. Introduzione. I.1. Un’editio minor come sfida aperta. I.2 Per una più selettiva eliminatio. II.1 Sulla storia del problema : l’eredità del XIX secolo (Brandis 1823, Christ 1885, Gercke 1892) nelle edizioni del XX (Ross 1924, Jaeger 1957). II.2. Studi recenti : la necessità di un superamento. II.3. Lo stemma di riferimento : Harlfinger (1979). II.4. L’applicazione dello stemma nel libro Alpha edito da Primavesi. II.5. La revisione dello stemma, proposta per Kappa e Lambda (2009, 2010). II.6. La reazione : (...) discussioni sul ruolo della tradizione β in Kappa e Lambda (2015). III. Una verifica dello stemma in agenda : la divisione delle due famiglie. III.1 Fra i codici β : L’Ambrosianus F 113 Sup. come codex descriptus ? (libri I-IX inc.). III.2. L’ipotesi dell’ interpositus ε e le sue implicazioni sistematiche. III.3 Allievo e maestro nel XV secolo : Matthaios Chamariotes (C) e Giorgio Scholarios, Gennadeios II (Vk). III.4. Il non liquet sulle parti inferiori dello stemma e il concetto di contaminazione. IV.1. Rivedendo lo stemma dall’interno : il problema critico degli errori-guida (Leitfehler). IV.2. Iudicium e valutazione degli errori. IV.3. Errori separativi ed errori congiuntivi secondo la Textkritik di Paul Maas. IV.4. Una verifica importante : il ruolo di γ. V. Un’ipotesi alternativa . V.1. Il testo della Metafisica nei codici poziori. V.2. Un ritorno alla sigla ". V.3. Un nuovo stemma dei codici principali della Metafisica. Appendice : una verifica sull’ipotesi γ. (shrink)

“Dalla filosofia dell’azione alla filosofia della mente” è stato il percorso di alcuni filosofi di nazionalità varia degli anni 1980 – come Paul Churchland negli Stati Uniti o Ansgar Beckermann in Germania – che prima si sono interessati agli aspetti più teorici nella filosofia dell’azione, come il modo di funzionamento delle azioni e la loro spiegazione scientifica, e che poi, con l’arrivo e la diffusione dei personal computers e delle scienze cognitive, hanno ampliato e approfondito questo interesse di ricerca (...) e si sono dedicati alla filosofia della mente più in generale e in particolare alla spiegazione scientifica e filosofica del mentale. Sandro Nannini faceva parte di questo movimento ed è stato uno tra gli inizialmente pochi filosofi italiani che si sono occupati di questi argomenti; successivamente ne è diventato uno dei maggiori specialisti in Italia, proponendo una sua particolare versione di naturalizzazione del mentale. Subordinata agli interessi teorici è stata la sua iniziativa accademica di fondare e promuovere il primo dottorato italiano di ricerca in Scienze Cognitive. Il presente volume tratta dell’opera di Sandro Nannini in contributi che sono riflessioni più o meno specifiche sulle differenti tappe del suo percorso, affrontando temi come l’analisi dell'azione, il libero arbitrio, la discussione di Nannini di vari classici della filosofia, la tendenza del naturalismo a dissolvere la filosofia in un enciclopedismo empirico e la sfida dei qualia e della fenomenologia all’approccio naturalistico alla mente. Il volume contiene inoltre un saggio dello stesso Sandro Nannini, nel quale espone l’ultimo sviluppo della sua filosofia della mente nonché le risposte agli interventi degli altri autori: Mario De Caro, Sara Dellantonio, Rosaria Egidi, Roberta Lanfredini, Christoph Lumer, Paolo Parrini, Pietro Perconti, Claudio Pizzi, Emanuela Scribano e Giuseppe Varnier. (shrink)

Penetapan kebijakan Doi Moi di Vietnam merupakan langkah awal dari Partai Komunis Vietnam untuk menaikkan perekonomian negara. Hal tersebut dilakukan dengan cara mengubah sistem perekonomian sentralistik menjadi desentralistik dan membuka liberalisasi perdagangan. Penerapan Doi Moi tidak hanya berdampak pada sektor ekonomi, namun juga pada sektor kesehatan yang ditunjukan dengan adanya ketidakmerataan akses terhadap layanan kesehatan. Pemerintah selanjutnya mengeluarkan Dekrit 43 Tahun 2006, mengenai otonomisasi badan usaha publik termasuk rumah sakit. Kebijakan tersebut diharapkan berfungsi sebagai solusi atas permasalahan layanan kesehatan pada (...) saat itu. Penulisan ini akan menganalisis implementasi Dekrit 43 Tahun 2006, dengan menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif serta teori implementasi kebijakan publik yang digagas oleh Daniel A. Mazmanian dan Paul A. Sabatier. Hasil dari temuan penelitian ini adalah pemberian otonomi tersebut dianggap tidak berhasil karena masih terdapat komersialisasi layanan kesehatan, sehingga menyebabkan ketidakmerataan layanan kesehatan. (shrink)

This paper investigates a well-known case of simultaneous discovery in twentieth-century chemistry, the origins of the concept of hybridisation, in the light of Kuhn's insights. There has been no ambiguity as to who discovered this concept, when it was "rst in print, and how important it was. The full-#edged form of the concept was published in 1931 independently by two American scientists John C. Slater (1900}1976) and Linus Pauling (1901}1994), although both of them had made their ideas public earlier: Slater (...) at the American Physical Society meetings in 1930, and Pauling in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 1928. Slater and Pauling both argued for the necessity of using an s orbital as well as three p orbitals in the carbon atom in order to explain carbon's four valences and the tetrahedral structure of methane. The metaphor &hybridisation' for denoting this mix of s and p orbitals was "rst used by Robert S. Mulliken and J. H. Van Vleck before gaining currency with the scienti"c community around 1935.2 The concept of hybridisation was indeed indispensable for extending the quantum-mechanical interpretation of the chemical bond as an electron pairing from diatomic molecules to polyatomic ones. To be sure, the emergence of hybridisation attests to scientists' growing interest in exploring the borderland between physics and chemistry, a trend that led to the creation of physical chemistry in the late nineteenth century and of chemical physics and quantum chemistry in the 1920s and 30s. Slater and Pauling themselves experienced and on many occasions talked about the fruitfulness of interdisciplinary research; and historians have legitimately illuminated their works by examining them in this broad context.3 Yet the careful analysis of their research notes and published papers reveals that Slater and Pauling were working in quite disparate disciplinary traditions, with di!erent approaches, for di!erent audiences, and towards di!erent goals. The aim of this paper is to explore their di!erent routes to a common destination*hybridisation*and thereby to explicate tensions existing between physics and chemistry amidst the institutional and conceptual overlapping of the two disciplines. (shrink)

In their pioneering, masterly research and survey on Bartolomeo Fonzio’s manuscripts, published in 1974, Stefano Caroti and Stefano Zamponi informed the reader that the Ms. Ricc. 152 of the Riccardiana Library in Florence was a huge amount of notebooks with notes taken by Fonzio while attending the Studium in Florence. Among them Caroti and Zamponi called the reader’s attention to the notes Fonzio took when he went to Argyropoulos’ lessons on the Posterior Analytics. In this essay the reader finds a (...) transcription of those notes, preceded by some comments on the sources from which the outstanding commentator is likely to have drawn and which can be picked out from the fragmentary notes, that is John Philoponus and Paul of Venice. (shrink)

In this paper, the author examines the concept of "demonic" in Thomas Mann’s novel, Doctor Faustus, under a historical and philosophical perspective. The demonic represents Mann’s attempt to interpret the German history and its tragic turn in 20th century through the fictional mask of the main character’s life, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, who, as Faust before him, made a deal with the devil, losing his soul in exchange for genius and success. The work proceeds from a comparison between Mann’s character (...) of Satan and the theologian Paul Tillich’s idea of demonic expressed in his 1926 essay Das Dämonische. Ein Beitrag zur Sinndeutung der Geschichte, where it is interpreted as a dialectic and ambiguous concept: not merely negative, but also positive in its existing. Tillich’s concept of demonic is strongly connected to Mann’s, who elected music as a mean to express the demonic, precisely for its supreme ambiguity: on one hand it is mathematically structured, on the other it voluptuously attracts the listener to an inarticulate ancient chaos. (shrink)

Horwich memberikan analisis baik Wittgenstein (w) dan merupakan sarjana W terkemuka, tetapi dalam pandangan saya, mereka semua jatuh pendek dari apresiasi penuh, seperti yang saya jelaskan di length dalam tinjauan ini dan banyak lainnya. Jika seseorang tidak mengerti W (dan sebaiknya Searle juga) maka saya tidak melihat bagaimana seseorang bisa memiliki lebih dari pemahaman yang dangkal filsafat dan urutan yang lebih tinggi berpikir dan dengan demikian dari semua perilaku kompleks (psikologi, Sosiologi, antropologi, sejarah, sastra, masyarakat). Singkatnya, W menunjukkan bahwa ketika (...) Anda telah menunjukkan bagaimana kalimat digunakan dalam konteks kepentingan, tidak ada lagi yang dapat dikatakan. Saya akan mulai dengan beberapa kutipan penting dan kemudian memberikan apa yang saya pikir adalah pertimbangan minimum yang diperlukan untuk memahami Wittgenstein, filsafat dan perilaku manusia. -/- Pertama mungkin dicatat bahwa menempatkan "meta" di depan kata apapun harus tersangka. W berkomentar misalnya, bahwa metamathematics adalah matematika seperti yang lain. Gagasan bahwa kita dapat melangkah keluar filsafat (yaitu, psikologi deskriptif pemikiran yang lebih tinggi) adalah dirinya sendiri kebingungan yang mendalam. Iritasi lain di sini (dan di seluruh akademik menulis selama 4 dekade terakhir) adalah bahasa yang konstan sebaliknya seksisme dari "dia" dan "miliknya" dan "dia" atau "dia/dia" dll, di mana "mereka" dan "mereka" dan "mereka" akan melakukan dengan baik. Demikian pula, penggunaan kata Perancis ' repertoar ' di mana bahasa Inggris ' Repertory ' akan cukup baik. Kekurangan utama adalah kegagalan lengkap (meskipun sangat umum) untuk mempekerjakan apa yang saya lihat sebagai sangat kuat dan intuitif dua sistem pandangan HOT dan Searle's kerangka yang telah saya diuraikan di atas. Hal ini terutama pedih dalam bab tentang makna p111 et seq. (terutama di catatan kaki 2-7), di mana kita berenang di air yang sangat berlumpur tanpa kerangka benar otomatis hanya S1, disposisional proposisional S2, cos dll Satu juga bisa mendapatkan pandangan yang lebih baik dari dalam dan luar dengan membaca misalnya, Johnston atau Budd (Lihat ulasan saya). Horwich namun membuat banyak komentar tajam. Saya terutama menyukai ringkasan nya dari impor w's anti-teoritis sikap pada P65. Dia perlu memberikan penekanan lebih untuk ' pada kepastian ', baru-baru ini subjek banyak usaha oleh Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Coliva dan lain-lain dan diringkas dalam artikel baru-baru ini. -/- Horwich adalah tingkat pertama dan pekerjaannya layak usaha. Satu harapan bahwa ia (dan semua orang) akan mempelajari Searle dan beberapa psikologi modern serta Hutto, baca, Hutchinson, Stern, Moyal-Sharrock, berjalan, hacker dan Baker dll untuk mencapai pandangan modern yang luas perilaku. Sebagian besar kertas mereka berada di academia dot edu dan philpapers dot org, tetapi untuk PMS Hacker. -/- Dia memberikan salah satu ringkasan yang paling indah di mana pemahaman Wittgenstein meninggalkan kita yang pernah saya lihat. -/- "Tidak boleh ada upaya untuk menjelaskan linguistik/kegiatan konseptual kita (PI 126) seperti Frege pengurangan aritmatika untuk logika; tidak ada upaya untuk memberikan fondasi epistemologis (PI 124) seperti dalam arti rekening berdasarkan pengetahuan apriori; tidak ada upaya untuk mencirikan bentuk ideal itu (PI 130) seperti dalam pengertian Logics; tidak ada usaha untuk mereformasi (PI 124, 132) seperti teori kesalahan Mackie atau intuisi Dummett; tidak ada upaya untuk merampingkan itu (PI 133) seperti dalam laporan quine keberadaan; tidak ada usaha untuk membuatnya lebih konsisten (PI 132) seperti dalam tanggapan Tarski terhadap paradoks pembohong; dan tidak ada upaya untuk membuatnya lebih lengkap (PI 133) seperti dalam penyelesaian pertanyaan identitas pribadi untuk skenario aneh ' teleportasi '. -/- Akhirnya, izinkan saya menyarankan bahwa dengan perspektif saya telah mendorong di sini, W adalah di pusat filsafat dan psikologi kontemporer dan tidak jelas, sulit atau tidak relevan, tapi gemilang, mendalam dan jernih dan bahwa untuk merindukannya adalah untuk melewatkan salah satu petualangan intelektual terbesar mungkin. -/- Mereka yang ingin komprehensif up to date kerangka perilaku manusia dari dua systems tampilan modern dapat berkonsultasi buku saya 'struktur Logis filsafat, psikologi, mind dan bahasa dalam Ludwig wittgenstein dan John Searle ' 2nd Ed (2019). Mereka yang tertarik pada tulisan saya lebih mungkin melihat 'berbicara monyet--filsafat, psikologi, ilmu, agama dan politik di planet yang ditakdirkan--artikel dan review 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) dan bunuh diri utopian delusi di 21st Century 4th Ed (2019) . (shrink)

Nei dintorni di Paul Celan e Ingeborg Bachmann.

Cardinal Bessarion (1408–1472), in the second chapter of the first book of his influential work In calumniatorem Platonis, attempted to reply to Georgios Trapezuntios’ (1396–1474) criticism against Plato in the Comparatio Philosophorum Platonis et Aristotelis. Bessarion investigates why the Athenian philosopher maintained, in several dialogues, that the sacred truths should not be communicated to the general public and argued in favor of the value of oral transmission of knowledge, largely based on his theory about the cognitive processes. Recently, Fr. Bessarion (...) Kouotsis has argued that Cardinal Bessarion’s reasoning draws primarily on the “Disciplina Arcani”, i.e., the rule of secrecy, which was an established practice of the Early Christian Church, aimed at protecting and preserving the core elements of the religion from outsiders. While I find Kouotsis’ approach interesting and thought-provoking—for instance, the idea that Bessarion’s argumentation was likely influenced by Eastern Christian views on the rule of secrecy—I intend, first of all, to discuss why Bessarion did not explicitly mention it. Moreover, I would like to argue that Bessarion’s good knowledge of the long Platonic tradition and Eastern mysticism, encompassing both pagan and Christian elements, should also be considered a significant source. Furthermore, I would like to question Kouotsis’ implicit argument that Bessarion’s views were dominated by his training in Orthodox theology and discuss the possibility that Pletho’s (1355–1454) teaching was the obvious influence for Bessarion’s defense of secrecy. After all, we should bear in mind that Anastos has already pointed out Pletho’s reverence for the rule of secrecy. Finally, I would like to support that Bessarion, in the specific text, focused predominantly on the epistemological and cognitive aspects of oral teaching, resorting to the rule of secrecy only to enhance his views. (shrink)

The increasing workplace use of artificially intelligent (AI) technologies has implications for the experience of meaningful human work. Meaningful work refers to the perception that one’s work has worth, significance, or a higher purpose. The development and organisational deployment of AI is accelerating, but the ways in which this will support or diminish opportunities for meaningful work and the ethical implications of these changes remain under-explored. This conceptual paper is positioned at the intersection of the meaningful work and ethical AI (...) literatures and offers a detailed assessment of the ways in which the deployment of AI can enhance or diminish employees’ experiences of meaningful work. We first outline the nature of meaningful work and draw on philosophical and business ethics accounts to establish its ethical importance. We then explore the impacts of three paths of AI deployment (replacing some tasks, ‘tending the machine’, and amplifying human skills) across five dimensions constituting a holistic account of meaningful work, and finally assess the ethical implications. In doing so we help to contextualise the meaningful work literature for the era of AI, extend the ethical AI literature into the workplace, and conclude with a range of practical implications and future research directions. (shrink)

Overview of fundamental work in deontic logic.

Intuitively, many people seem to hold that engaging in acts of virtual murder in videogames is morally permissible, whereas engaging in acts of virtual child molestation is morally impermissible. The Gamer’s Dilemma (Luck in Ethics Inf Technol 11:31–36, 2009) challenges these intuitions by arguing that it is unclear whether there is a morally relevant difference between these two types of virtual actions. There are two main responses in the literature to this dilemma. First, attempts to resolve the dilemma by defending (...) an account of the relevant moral differences between virtual murder and virtual child molestation. Second, attempts to dissolve the dilemma by undermining the intuitions that ground it. In this paper, we argue that a narrow version of the Gamer’s Dilemma seems to survive attempts to resolve or dissolve it away entirely, since neither approach seems to be able to solve the dilemma for all cases. We thus provide a contextually sensitive version of the dilemma that more accurately tracks onto the intuitions of gamers. However, we also argue that the intuitions that ground the narrow version of the Dilemma may not have a moral foundation, and we put forward alternative non-moral normative foundations that seem to better account for the remaining intuitive difference between the two types of virtual actions. We also respond to proposed solutions to the Gamer’s Dilemma in novel ways and set out areas for future empirical work in this area. (shrink)

Philosophy has long either dismissed or paid only minimal attention to creativity, and even with the rise of research on imagination, the creative imagination has largely been ignored as well. The aim of this volume is to correct this neglect. By bringing together existing research in various sub-disciplines, we also aim to open up new avenues of research. The chapters in Part I provide some framing and history on the philosophical study of imagination and creativity, along with an overview of (...) the empirical literature. Part II explores imagination and creativity as they manifest in, and in turn shape, the individual. Part III surveys the role of imagination and creativity across a wide variety of artistic domains, and the chapters of Part IV turn to societal domains. Part V focuses on the interplay of imagination and creativity with regard to particular features of creative subjects and different kinds of creative subjects. *** -/- Part I: Theories and Approaches 1. Theories of Imagination (Peter Kung) 2. Theories of Creativity (Julia Langkau) 3. Historical Treatments of Imagination in the Western Tradition (Lucia Oliveri) 4. Historical Treatments of Creativity in the Western Tradition (Elliot Paul) 5. Non-Western Treatments of Imagination (Reza Hadisi and Jing Iris Hu) 6. Non-Western Treatments of Creativity (Nicolas B. Verger and Vlad Glăveanu) 7. Empirical Treatments of Imagination and Creativity (Dustin Stokes) 8. Experimental Philosophy of Imagination and Creativity (Michael T. Stuart) 9. The Relationship between Imagination and Creativity (Margherita Arcangeli) -/- Part II: Imagination and Creativity in Mind and Action 10. Imagination, Creativity, and Skill (Amy Kind) 11. Imagination, Creativity, and Attention (Bence Nanay) 12. Imagination, Creativity, and Agency (Caterina Moruzzi) 13. Imagination, Creativity, and Emotion (Julien Deonna and Fabrice Teroni) 14. Imagination, Creativity, and Embodiment (Adriana Clavel-Vázquez and María Jimena Clavel Vázquez) 15. Imagination, Creativity, and Gender (Luke Roelofs) 16. Imagination, Creativity, and Race (Nicholas Whittaker) 17. Imagination, Creativity, and Child Development (Thalia Goldstein, Anna Sofia Caruso, Darian Stapleton, and Lamin Fatty) -/- Part III: Imagination and Creativity in the Arts 18. Imagination, Creativity, and the Visual Arts (Claire Anscomb) 19. Imagination, Creativity, and Music (Matteo Ravasio) 20. Imagination, Creativity, and Fiction (Hannah H. Kim) 21. Imagination, Creativity, and Dance (David Davies and Anna Pakes) 22. Imagination, Creativity, and the Culinary Arts (Patrik Engisch) 23. Imagination, Creativity, and Film (Murray Smith) 24. Imagination, Creativity, and Acting (Tzachi Zamir) 25. Imagination, creativity, and fashion (Laura T. Di Summa) -/- Part IV: Imagination and Creativity in Society 26. Imagination and Creativity in the Scientific Realm (Alice Murphy) 27. Imagination and Creativity in the Moral Realm (Tim Mulgan) 28. Imagination and Creativity in the Political Realm (Avshalom Schwartz) 29. Imagination and Creativity in the Law (Maksymilian Del Mar) 30. Imagination and Creativity in the Religious Realm (Neil Van Leeuwen) 31. Imagination and Creativity in Business (Eric Peterson) 32. Imagination and Creativity in Times of Crisis (Jennifer Fraser and Noah Stemeroff) Part V: Emerging Issues in Imagination and Creativity Research 33. Imagination, Creativity, and Aphantasia (Andrea Blomkvist) 34. Imagination, Creativity, and Neurodivergence (Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa) 35. Imagination, Creativity, and Non-Human Animals (Henry Shevlin) 36. Imagination, Creativity, and Artificial Intelligence (Peter Langland-Hassan) 37. Collective Imagination and Collective Creativity (Nick Wiltsher) . (shrink)

In this paper I shall defend the idea that there is an abstract and general core meaning of objectivity, and what is seen as a variety of concepts or conceptions of objectivity are in fact criteria of, or means to achieve, objectivity. I shall then discuss the ideal of value-free science and its relation to the objectivity of science; its status can be at best a criterion of, or means for, objectivity. Given this analysis, we can then turn to the (...) problem of inductive risk. Do the value judgements regarding inductive risk really pose a threat to the objectivity of science? I claim that this is not the case because they do not lower the thresholds scientifically postulated for objectivity. I shall conclude the paper with a discussion of under-appreciated influences of values on science, which indeed pose a serious threat to the objectivity of some scientific disciplines. (shrink)

How social media impacts the autonomy of its users is a topic of increasing focus. However, much of the literature that explores these impacts fails to engage in depth with the philosophical literature on autonomy. This has resulted in a failure to consider the full range of impacts that social media might have on autonomy. A deeper consideration of these impacts is thus needed, given the importance of both autonomy as a moral concept and social media as a feature of (...) contemporary life. By drawing on this philosophical literature, we argue that autonomy is broadly a matter of developing autonomy competencies, having authentic ends and control over key aspects of your own life, and not being manipulated, coerced, and controlled by others. We show how the autonomy of users of social media can be disrespected and harmed through the control that social media can have over its users’ data, attention, and behaviour. We conclude by discussing various recommendations to better regulate social media. (shrink)

In certain cases, people judge that agents bring about ends intentionally but also that they do not bring about the means that brought about those ends intentionally—even though bringing about the ends and means is just as likely. We call this difference in judgments the Kraemer effect. We offer a novel explanation for this effect: a perceived difference in the extent to which agents know how to bring about the means and the ends explains the Kraemer effect. In several experiments, (...) we replicate the Kraemer effect in a variety of non-moral and moral scenarios, and we find support for our new account. This work accords with a burgeoning area of action theory that identifies an important connection between know-how and intentionality. (shrink)

The concept of dignity plays a foundational role in the more recent versions of Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities theory. However, despite its centrality to her theory, Nussbaum’s conception of dignity remains under-theorised. In this paper we critically examine the role that dignity plays in Nussbaum’s theory by, first, developing an account of the concept of dignity and introducing a distinction between two types of dignity, status dignity and achievement dignity. Next, drawing on this account, we analyse Nussbaum’s conception of dignity and (...) contrast it with Kant’s conception of dignity. On the basis of this comparison between Nussbaum and Kant, we highlight tensions between Nussbaum’s Aristotelianism, which is central to her conception of dignity, and her commitment to political liberalism. This leads us to conclude that Nussbaum’s claim that her conception of dignity is only a partial political conception is implausible and that her conception of dignity seems to commit her to a satisficing form of perfectionist liberalism. (shrink)

This chapter explores a case study in contemporary fanaticism. We adopt Katsafanas’s conceptualization of fanaticism to make possible an in-depth discussion of and evaluation of a diffuse but important social movement — the anglophone manosphere. According to Katsafanas, fanatics are fruitfully understood as members of a group that adopts sacred values which they hold unconditionally to preserve their own psychic unity, and who feel that those values are threatened by those who do not accept them. The manosphere includes several social (...) movements, including incels, men’s rights activists, and men-going-their-own-way. We show that many members of these groups are well-characterized by Katsafanas’s theory of fanaticism, and that they have forged their fanatical group identity using tools that philosophers have tended to associate with more benign social movements and the task of “conceptual engineering.” Indeed, we think that manosphere groups have in many cases been more successful than more palatable liberationist movements, and that this case study in the dark side of conceptual engineering may be both sobering and informative. (shrink)

Using artificial intelligence (AI) to make decisions in human resource management (HRM) raises questions of how fair employees perceive these decisions to be and whether they experience respectful treatment (i.e., interactional justice). In this experimental survey study with open-ended qualitative questions, we examine decision making in six HRM functions and manipulate the decision maker (AI or human) and decision valence (positive or negative) to determine their impact on individuals’ experiences of interactional justice, trust, dehumanization, and perceptions of decision-maker role appropriate- (...) ness. In terms of decision makers, the use of human decision makers over AIs generally resulted in better perceptions of respectful treatment. In terms of decision valence, people experiencing positive over negative decisions generally resulted in better perceptions of respectful treatment. In instances where these cases conflict, on some indicators people preferred positive AI decisions over negative human decisions. Qualitative responses show how people identify justice concerns with both AI and human decision making. We outline implications for theory, practice, and future research. (shrink)

Appears to give the first model-theoretic account of both "must" and "ought" (without conflating them with one another). Some key pre-theoretic semantic and pragmatic phenomena that support a negative answer to the main title question are identified and a conclusion of some significance is drawn: a pervasive bipartisan presupposition of twentieth century ethical theory and deontic logic is false. Next, an intuitive model-theoretic framework for "must" and "ought" is hypothesized. It is then shown how this hypothesis helps to explain and (...) predict all the pre-theoretic phenomena previously observed. Next, I show that the framework hypothesized possesses additional expressive and explanatory power (e.g. derivatively predicting the existence of supererogatory and permissibly suboptimal alternatives), thus adding further confirmation that it is on the right track. (shrink)