Examining the period from the 1920s to the 1970s, one of the key features of the Rivista di filosofia is a lasting interest in the Renaissance and Vico, while the focus on seventeenth-century metaphysics is significantly more time-bound and linked to the activity of some prominent figures in the journal such as Piero Martinetti, Eugenio Colorni, and Gioele Solari. The rise of the Neo-Enlightenment caused a radical change in the editorial choices, and turned the journal’s focus toward the empiricist (...) tradition and the debate on historiographical methodologies. (shrink)

This paper considers the boundaries of "civility" in civil disobedience, by focusing on an extreme form of protest, namely, bossnapping. The latter involves workers 'kidnapping' their bosses, in order to force them to listen to their grievances. I argue that, notwithstanding its use of force, bossnapping may, under some circumstances, fulfil the requirements of a "civil" act of disobedience.

Some of the manuscripts once part of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s collection transmit autograph notes, which have been useful to reconstruct his library. A peculiar case is represented by the notes transmitted in a codex containing the Latin translation of Moses Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. These notes are actual corrections to the translation made mostly on the basis of a comparison with the Hebrew text, while in some other cases they derive from a specific interpretation. The aim of this (...) paper is to present some characteristics of the textual revisions, in particular with reference to the Hebrew source. The palaeographic data demonstrate Pico’s direct involvement, which leads to the question of the authorship of these notes, namely if they were the result of an autonomous work or of a collaboration with some other scholar. (shrink)

A presente pesquisa explora o ensaio de ontologia de Albert Camus (1913-1960), intitulado O mito de Sísifo (1942), no qual ele introduz sua teoria do absurdo, cujo propósito é questionar o sentido do mundo e da vida para o sujeito. Perguntando-se, o sujeito se depara com o sentimento de absurdo que manifesta o desejo de clareza frente a opacidade do mundo. Este sentimento é apresentado como uma experiência imediata frente ao não sentido do mundo e da vida. Uma das vias (...) que será analisada e tratada como uma resposta insuficiente para o sentimento de absurdo será o método fenomenológico proposto por Husserl que, através da intencionalidade - descrita como a experiência imediata do sujeito - é visto como uma medida que distancia o si de sua experiência. Distanciando-se da experiência, o método é compatível com uma das consequências do absurdo: a questão filosófica do suicídio. Outra consequência do absurdo será a revolta que é entendida como o que sustenta o sujeito a viver no desejo de clareza frente a irracionalidade do mundo que, posteriormente, resultará em uma Fenomenologia da Revolta. Para sustentar esta fenomenologia, será articulado a teoria do filósofo e fenomenólogo Michel Henry (1922-2002) através das suas obras L'essence de la manifestation (1963) e Fenomenología Material (1990). Nestas obras, Henry introduz o conceito de afetividade e páthos-com, que serão necessários para compreender o absurdo como uma afecção e condição de fragilidade que é compartilhada entre todos sujeitos resultando em uma intersubjetividade. Tanto a Revolta quanto o páthos-com revelam como o sujeito pode viver com o sentimento do absurdo e, desse modo, é possível afirmar a vida do si na solidão. Contudo, a conclusão presente nesta pesquisa constitui o argumento de que, pela Revolta enquanto coletividade que liga os sujeitos pela experiência absurda e pela essência constituinte da Vida, essa afirmação da vida de todos os sujeitos se torna mais forte. (shrink)

Can Marxist-Leninist philosophy disregard dialectical materialism, the analysis of material and social contradictions, the need to overcome and resolve them in the service of revolutionary transformation? ‘Does the lecturer acknowledge that the philosophy of Marxism is dialectical materialism’, as Lenin asked Bogdanov one day in May 1908? What had 'official Soviet Marxism' really become, capable of combining ideological dictatorship with militant philosophical ignorance, in turn justified by the achievements of modern science, skilfully used as an instrument of domination and preservation (...) of the established order? How can one conceptually dominate reality and its contradictions, knowing well that knowledge is never neutral but is class-based? These questions are answered by Evald Ilyenkov, one of the greatest Marxist philosophers of the 20th century, re-examining Lenin's Materialism and Empiriocriticism at the end of the 1970s with a text entitled Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism, still unpublished in Italy, and identifying in the revolutionary leader an exceptional theoretical ally. Just as Lenin had had to fight the attacks promoted by the theories of Bogdanov, who approached the empirio-criticism of Mach, Avenarius and Berman, seeing it as dogmatic and reactionary materialism directed against the natural sciences, so Ilyenkov fought against the penetration of positivism into Soviet politics and philosophy, criticizing the rejection of the dialectic only functional to the technocratic project of building 'socialism' in the Brezhnev era, a disguised heir of the empirio-criticism denounced by Lenin as the natural metaphysical conclusion to the logic of positivism. (shrink)

O presente trabalho visa apresentar a relação do método terapêutico da médica e psiquiatra Nise da Silveira (1905-1999) com a Fenomenologia da Vida do filósofo e fenomenólogo Michel Henry (1922-2002). Nise da Silveira revolucionou o tratamento psiquiátrico de sua época indo contra a psiquiatria tradicional e desenvolvendo um método revolucionário para o tratamento de pacientes esquizofrênicos, constituído através da arte, da cultura e, sobretudo, do que ela chama de afeto catalisador. Como método investigativo deste trabalho, a relação entre o afeto (...) catalisador, de Nise da Silveira, e a afetividade originária, de Michel Henry, é desenvolvida através das obras “Imagens do Inconsciente” (1981), de Nise, bem como “A Barbárie” (1987), “Encarnação: por uma filosofia da carne” (2013) e “Filosofia e Fenomenologia do corpo: ensaio sobre a ontologia biraniana” (2012) de Henry. O filósofo, assim como Nise que buscou uma terapia mais afetiva, em sua filosofia busca refletir sobre aquilo que foi deixado de lado pela filosofia clássica e pela fenomenologia tradicional: a vida tal qual como ela é. As teorias/abordagens de ambos autores buscam, de certa maneira, apontar para aquilo que a ciência e a racionalidade não conseguem penetrar: a carne afetiva da invisibilidade da vida na sua subjetividade absoluta. Diante disso, através do estabelecimento da relação do método de Nise à Fenomenologia da Vida de Henry, este trabalho visa realizar uma releitura fenomenológica da teoria das imagens. (shrink)

Socialism is a political ideology that proposes that the state should control the means of production to manage a planned economy. The possibility of realizing this thesis has been debated throughout the 20th century. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) includes technologies such as artificial intelligence or big data that could reopen the debate through the formulation of new digital models of planned economy. This qualitative research presents some theoretical models proposed in academia to update socialism in the 4IR. It describes (...) six new theoretical forms of digital socialism: Platform Economy, Socialist Feedback Infrastructure, Algorithmic Central Planning, Cyber-Communism, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC), and Open Loop In Natura Economic Planning. The study concludes that the study of political ideologies and the debate about the future of society would benefit from further analysis of these models. (shrink)

This article proposes the thesis that archeofuturism is a postmodern project of the International Alt-Right (IAR). By postmodern project we mean that: i) it is a project for a time after modernity; and ii) it is a project that, due to its content, can be classified as related to the ideas against modernity called postmodernism. As it is part of the IAR, archeofuturism is also a project of a fascist or far-right nature. To prove our thesis, we will first analyze (...) the Archefouturism developed by the French political scientist Guillaume Faye, a member of the IAR. Then what is IAR will be defined and its relationship with postmodernism will be evidenced. Finally, based on that connection called reactionary postmodernism, the existence of other archeofuturists theses that combine fascist rhetoric with postmodernism will be proposed. (shrink)

In juxtaposition with the myth and tragedy of Ovid’s Medea, this paper investigates the possibility within the Kantian conception of agency of understanding moral evil as acting against one’s better judgment. It defends the thesis that in Kant self-deception, i. e. the intentional untruthfulness to oneself, provides the fundamental structure for choosing against the moral law. I argue that, as Kant’s thought progresses, self-deception slowly proceeds to become the paradigmatic case of moral evil. This is discussed with regard to two (...) important topics in his later moral philosophy: the doctrine of radical evil and the crucial role of the duty of truthfulness in ethics. The inquiry into Kant’s theory of conscience unfolds both against this theoretical background and in light of its historical roots in the polemic against casuistry and probabilism. This contribution closes with a brief look at the tools Kant implements to counter this tendency to self-deception in moral judgment and particularly at the role casuistry plays within his conception of moral education. (shrink)

Transhumanism is a philosophical system that proposes the use of advanced technologies directly in the human body to modify and improve its biological condition. That is the core idea of transhumanism and it can be adopted by various ideological systems in different ways. It will depend on their ethical approach and what they define as “improvement”. In this article we will quickly review the difference between transhumanist philosophy, Transhumanism and Transhumanisms.

The technological innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution have facilitated the formulation of strategies to transcend human limitations; strategies that are widely supported by the transhumanist philosophy. The purpose of this article is to explain the relationship between ‘transhumanism’ and ‘technological singularity’, to which end the Fourth Industrial Revolution and transhumanism are also briefly covered. Subsequently, the three main models of technological singularity are evaluated and a definition of this futuristic concept is offered. Finally, the author provides a reflection on (...) the relationship between technological singularity and the transhumanist philosophy, and concludes that they are not synonymous, but rather that the former is an eventuality that will allow the latter. (shrink)

Biohacking is a grass-roots movement that brings the knowledge and experimen-tal practice of biological sciences to a non-specialized public. This article seeks to identify biohacking as a type of transhumanism and not just as a movement influenced by the latter. To do so, it examines the constitution, history, practi-ces, and moral codes of the biohacker movement. Subsequently, it compares the results with the definition of transhumanism, finding points of similarity in the hypotheses of both, as well as an adaptation of (...) transhumanist values to biohac-king. It concludes by identifying biohacking as a type of transhumanism. (shrink)

The ethical debate on human enhancement has motivated to discuss about animal enhancement. In this nascent discussion, various concepts that refer to the technological modification of animals are sometimes used indistinctly, including animal enhancement, animal uplift, animal augmentation and animal disenhancement. The purpose of this article is to provide a more precise definition of the above concepts. For this, the available literature on the debate was reviewed and it was concluded that these terms, although similar, refer to different types of (...) technological modifications. (shrink)

The nationalist phenomenon has played an important role in contemporary history. We are currently entering the fourth industrial revolution, a process of social and political change driven by artificial intelligence, 5G connectivity and other cutting-edge technologies. This paper explores the manifestation of nationalism in the fourth industrial revolution, in particular the concepts of techno-nationalism and digital nationalism, their relationship and their differences. Subsequently, the article explains how digital media affect the rise of techno-nationalism and offers a broader definition of the (...) concept, including the ideas of digital territory, digital culture and digital identity. The article concludes that techno-nationalism is a complex manifestation of nationalism that includes not only a country’s quest for technological sovereignty, but also has an ideological component strongly linked to the political use of cutting-edge technologies. (shrink)

Purpose/Background. The present research focuses on the debate on transhumanism/bioconservatism from the perspective of empirical bioethics, that is, making use of em-pirical evidence in the process of moral reasoning. Its objective is to propose a metho-dological guide for the approach and resolution of moral problems concerning human enhancement. Methodology/Approach. The method Step-wise Ethical Human Enhancemet (SWEH) is proposed. It is a guide consisting of 11 questions that are the result of the adaptation of the guidelines for identifying a human enhancement (...) procedure as ethical developed by Julian Savulescu to the method of Step-wise Empirical Contributions elaborated by Pascal Borry. An applicative example on the morality of biohacking RFID implants is provided. Results/Findings. SWEH proposes that human enhancement procedures might be approached as specific problems and that the identified moral norm might be rewritten as a descriptive proposition that serves as a hypothesis that will be evaluated in the light of empirical evidence. The evaluation of the proposition, and thus of moral reasoning, will be done with the help of the information gathered by the 11 questions. Discussion/Conclusions/Contributions. SWEH can serve to provide a first answer on the morality of a specific human enhancement procedure, but not an absolute one, as the result may vary depending on the information obtained in the future. It also highli-ghts gaps in empirical research related to the procedure it addresses. The method is a first methodological guide that could be revised and improved. (shrink)

The following article provides a descriptive approach to the Latin American neoconservative movement led by Argentinian political scientist Agustín Laje. This group has become a new reactionary movement in the region and has brought together different intellectuals around a discourse against to the political left and progressivism. The article is divided into 4 sections: the first dedicated to its classification, the second to its origins, composition and activities, the third to its narrative and the fourth is an approach to its (...) discursive strategies. It is concluded that the movement does not fit exactly into an existing right-wing classification, has a unified discourse, is constantly active and it is suggested that uses communicational strategies of a great populist and intuitive nature. (shrink)

O presente trabalho visa apresentar a relação do método terapêutico da médica e psiquiatra Nise da Silveira (1905-1999) com a Fenomenologia da Vida do filósofo e fenomenólogo Michel Henry (1922-2002). Nise da Silveira revolucionou o tratamento psiquiátrico de sua época indo contra a psiquiatria tradicional e desenvolvendo um método revolucionário para o tratamento de pacientes esquizofrênicos, constituído através da arte, da cultura e, sobretudo, do que ela chama de afeto catalisador. Como método investigativo deste trabalho, a relação entre o afeto (...) catalisador, de Nise da Silveira, e a afetividade originária, de Michel Henry, é desenvolvida através das obras “Imagens do Inconsciente” (1981), de Nise, bem como “A Barbárie” (1987), “Encarnação: por uma filosofia da carne” (2013) e “Filosofia e Fenomenologia do corpo: ensaio sobre a ontologia biraniana” (2012) de Henry. O filósofo, assim como Nise que buscou uma terapia mais afetiva, em sua filosofia busca refletir sobre aquilo que foi deixado de lado pela filosofia clássica e pela fenomenologia tradicional: a vida tal qual como ela é. As teorias/abordagens de ambos autores buscam, de certa maneira, apontar para aquilo que a ciência e a racionalidade não conseguem penetrar: a carne afetiva da invisibilidade da vida na sua subjetividade absoluta. Diante disso, através do estabelecimento da relação do método de Nise à Fenomenologia da Vida de Henry, este trabalho visa realizar uma releitura fenomenológica da teoria das imagens. (shrink)

La Cuarta Revolución Industrial es un conjunto de transformaciones sociales que están y seguirán siendo provocadas en los próximos años por la irrupción de tecnologías que parecieran propias de las narraciones de ciencia ficción. Se trata de un grupo de tecnologías convergentes, es decir, que tienden a complementarse y cubrir áreas más allá del rubro o disciplina desde y para el que fueron diseñadas. A partir del informe de los talleres sobre tecnologías convergentes impulsados por el National Science Foudnation (NSF) (...) de Estados Unidos en el año 2002, estas fueron conocidas con el nombre de tecnologías NBIC, por sus siglas Nanotecnologías, Biotecnologías, Infotecnologías (tecnologías de la información) y de las ciencias cognitivas. Como indicó el presidente del Foro Económico Mundial, Klaus Schwab (2016), el impacto de estas tecnologías será tal que no solo prometen cambiar el qué y cómo hacemos las cosas, sino también el quiénes somos, por lo que conocer algunas de las características de este nuevo horizonte tecnológico es fundamental para el debate sobre el futuro. Veamos a continuación algunas de estas. (shrink)

In epoca medievale si è molto discusso su alcuni concetti chiave come prova o giustificazione. La teoria della prova contenuta nei trattati di logica medievale prende il nome tecnico di consequentia, che è un tipo di ragionamento fondato sul passaggio dalla concessione (o negazione) di uno o più enunciati denominati antecedenti alla concessione (o negazione) di uno o più enunciati denominati conseguenti. Questo tipo di teoria ha avuto un correlato a livello dei singoli termini che compongono l’enunciato all'interno della teoria (...) nota come suppositio terminorum. Prende, infatti, il nome di descensus, la regola che permette la verifica del passaggio da un termine maggiore (un termine comune) ad un termine minore (che denota individui). La stessa definizione di alcune ramificazioni della teoria della suppositio è col-legata alla possibilità di ammettere o meno il descensus cioè questa "discesa" da un termine comune ad una congiunzione o disgiunzione di termini singolari. Il presente lavoro intende descrivere la teoria del descensus come un tipo particolare di consequentia mostrandone le connessioni con le moderne tecniche logiche. I trattati che si affronteranno appartengono al XIV e al XV secolo, cioè ad un periodo caratterizzato da una sistemazione della materia che li rende confrontabili con un quadro teorico unitario. (shrink)

I argue against Appel's recent proposal – in this JOURNAL – that there is a fundamental human right to sexual pleasure, and that therefore the sexual pleasure of severely disabled people should be publicly funded – by thereby partially legalizing prostitution. I propose an alternative that does not need to pose a new positive human right; does not need public funding; does not need the legalization of prostitution; and that would offer a better experience to the severely disabled: charitable non-profit (...) organizations whose members would voluntarily and freely provide sexual pleasure to the severely disabled. (shrink)

The literature on algorithmic fairness has examined exogenous sources of biases such as shortcomings in the data and structural injustices in society. It has also examined internal sources of bias as evidenced by a number of impossibility theorems showing that no algorithm can concurrently satisfy multiple criteria of fairness. This paper contributes to the literature stemming from the impossibility theorems by examining how informational richness affects the accuracy and fairness of predictive algorithms. With the aid of a computer simulation, we (...) show that informational richness is the engine that drives improvements in the performance of a predictive algorithm, in terms of both accuracy and fairness. The centrality of informational richness suggests that classification parity, a popular criterion of algorithmic fairness, should be given relatively little weight. But we caution that the centrality of informational richness should be taken with a grain of salt in light of practical limitations, in particular, the so-called bias-variance trade off. (shrink)

Advances in neuroscience implicate reentrant signaling as the predominant form of communication between brain areas. This principle was used in a series of masking experiments that defy explanation by feed-forward theories. The masking occurs when a brief display of target plus mask is continued with the mask alone. Two masking processes were found: an early process affected by physical factors such as adapting luminance and a later process affected by attentional factors such as set size. This later process is called (...) masking by object substitution, because it occurs whenever there is a mismatch between the reentrant visual representation and the ongoing lower level activity. Iterative reentrant processing was formalized in a computational model that provides an excellent fit to the data. The model provides a more comprehensive account of all forms of visual masking than do the long-held feed-forward views based on inhibitory contour interactions. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is an important anomaly to the causalist/compatibilist paradigm in the philosophy of action and free will. This anomaly, which to my knowledge has gone unnoticed so far, can be found in the philosophy of Harry Frankfurt. Two of his most important contributions to the field – his influential counterexample to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities and his ‘guidance’ view of action – are incompatible. The importance of this inconsistency goes far beyond the issue (...) of coherence within Frankfurt’s philosophy. I shall argue that this inconsistency represents an important anomaly within the causalist/compatibilist framework; so that we should start to seriously consider having to move on from the established paradigm. (shrink)

To date, diagnosing Attention Defi cit Hyperactivity Disorder remains indeed one of the most controversial issues in contemporary psychiatry and behavioural sciences. Most of the conceptual problems regarding the validity of this diagnostic category arise from the heterogeneity of syndromal pictures and the high rate of comorbidity observed in subjects diagnosed with ADHD at all stages of the longitudinal course of the disorder. In this regard, DSM 5 increased complexity by allowing a diagnosis of comorbidity between ADHD and autism spectrum (...) disorders while these two diagnoses were mutually exclusive in DSM-IV-TR. (shrink)

Many oppose the use of profile evidence against defendants at trial, even when the statistical correlations are reliable and the jury is free from prejudice. The literature has struggled to justify this opposition. We argue that admitting profile evidence is objectionable because it violates what we call “equal protection”—that is, a right of innocent defendants not to be exposed to higher ex ante risks of mistaken conviction compared to other innocent defendants facing similar charges. We also show why admitting other (...) forms of evidence, such as eyewitness, trace, and motive evidence, does not violate equal protection. (shrink)

Many philosophers have pointed out that statistical evidence, or at least some forms of it, lack desirable epistemic or non-epistemic properties, and that this should make us wary of litigations in which the case against the defendant rests in whole or in part on statistical evidence. Others have responded that such broad reservations about statistical evidence are overly restrictive since appellate courts have expressed nuanced views about statistical evidence. In an effort to clarify and reconcile, I put forward an interpretive (...) analysis of why statistical evidence should raise concerns in some cases but not others. I argue that when there is a mismatch between the specificity of the evidence and the expected specificity of the accusation, statistical evidence—as any other kind of evidence—should be considered insufficient to sustain a conviction. I rely on different stylized court cases to illustrate the explanatory power of this analysis. (shrink)

Can epistemology be shaped by the Christian faith? Is there anything specific to this faith that can give rise to an equally specific epistemology without compromising the autonomy that the latter requires from faith? In the footsteps of Aquinas's religious epistemology, I first focus on the fact that Christian faith seems to characterize intellectual activity in a way that appears to be irreconcilable with epistemological perspectives that are not shaped by faith. Second, I argue that it is possible to do (...) justice to the irreconcilability in question by making reference to what radically distinguishes the Christian faith from the epistemological reflection. Finally, I focus on two ways in which the specific nature of Christian faith can shape and promote rationality, and give rise to a Christian epistemology. (shrink)

Thinking is overrated: golfers perform best when distracted and under pressure; firefighters make the right calls without a clue as to why; and you are yourself ill advised to look at your steps as you go down the stairs, or to try and remember your pin number before typing it in. Just do it, mindlessly. Both empirical psychologists and the common man have long worked out that thinking is often a bad idea, but philosophers still hang on to an intellectualist (...) picture of human action. This book challenges that picture and calls on philosophers to wake up to the power of mindlessness: it is our habits, skills and conventions that help us cope with a world way too diverse for us to hope to always reinterpret it. The book presents the empirical evidence that has been accumulating over the last few decades and offers a philosophical analysis of mindless phenomena such as habits, skilled activity, automatic actions, emotional and spontaneous reactions and social conventions, arguing that traditional philosophical theories of action should be revised to do justice to this forgotten but important part of our lives: when we act mindlessly, we are free and fully rational even though we neither deliberate nor are aware of what we are doing. (shrink)

Smith argues that, unlike other forms of evidence, naked statistical evidence fails to satisfy normic support. This is his solution to the puzzles of statistical evidence in legal proof. This paper focuses on Smith’s claim that DNA evidence in cold-hit cases does not satisfy normic support. I argue that if this claim is correct, virtually no other form of evidence used at trial can satisfy normic support. This is troublesome. I discuss a few ways in which Smith can respond.

Judith Jarvis Thomson has recently proposed a new argument for the thesis that killing the one in the Trolley Problem is not permissible. Her argument relies on the introduction of a new scenario, in which the bystander may also sacrifice herself to save the five. Thomson argues that those not willing to sacrifice themselves if they could may not kill the one to save the five. Bryce Huebner and Marc Hauser have recently put Thomson's argument to empirical test by asking (...) people what they should do in the new trilemma case, in which they may also sacrifice themselves. They found that the majority judge that they should either kill the one or sacrifice themselves; Huebner and Hauser argue that those numbers speak against Thomson's argument. But Thomson's argument was about the dialectical effect of the new trilemma on the traditional dilemma, rather than about the trilemma itself. Here I present the results of a study in which I asked subjects first what they should do in the trilemma and then what they should do in the traditional Trolley Problem. I found that, if asked first about the trilemma, subjects then have the intuition that killing the one in the traditional Bystander at the Switch is not permissible?exactly what Thomson's argument had predicted. (shrink)

I argue that the arguments brought by Counsel for M to the English Court of Protection are morally problematic in prioritising subjective interests that are the result of ‘consistent autonomous thought’ over subjective interests that are the result of a more limited cognitive perspective.

Il 2021 segna gli ottant’anni dalla nascita di Mario Perniola, uno dei massimi filosofi italiani del secondo dopoguerra. Questo volume raccoglie interventi che esplorano la sua opera mostrandone la fertilità e sottolineando al tempo stesso la prossimità delle sue idee con le principali sfide del nostro tempo. Dall’Italia al Brasile, passando per gli Stati Uniti, l’Irlanda, la Francia, il Belgio, il Messico e la Cina, gli autori si soffermano su temi che comprendono l’estetica, la politica, la teoria della comunicazione, i (...) queer studies, il pensiero rituale e religioso, la sessualità e la letteratura, restituendo la plurivocità e l’originalità di un filosofo di respiro internazionale e più che mai attuale. (shrink)

In 1931, Evgeny Pashukanis, the distinguished Soviet jurist, author of “The General Theory of Law and Marxism”, following an invitation to celebrate the centenary of Hegel’s death, published an assay entitled “Hegel, the State and Law” (Гегель. Государство и право) aimed to demistify, through a brief retrospective of Hegelian’s philosophy, its specific use, something achieved through the bourgeois ideology which, at some point in history, abandoned Kantism and its followers to embrace Neo-Hegelianism as a philosophy of domination and social control. (...) In this unpublished text, Pashukanis reflects, from a Marxist and Leninist point of view, on the ability to use Hegel as a bourgeois defense tool, when a particular society, specifically the one from the 1920s to the 1930s, began to be affected by the fear of communism and by the crises that endanger its very survival. From this angle, the capitalist interest - following Pashukanisian interpretation of Hegel - will only develop in the terms of a scientific elimination of all those subversive potentials that the economic crisis is destined to produce, thus reformulating the notions of State and Law which, in between obedience, discipline and defense of the homeland, come to assert the official recognition of the inexorably crushed proletariat in a condition in which all relations of production and social reproduction are transferred to the realm of exploitation, as its definitive subsumption to capital. (shrink)

I argue that the empirical literature on priming effects does not warrant nor suggest the conclusion, drawn by prominent psychologists such as J. A. Bargh, that we have no free will or less free will than we might think. I focus on a particular experiment by Bargh – the ‘elderly’ stereotype case in which subjects that have been primed with words that remind them of the stereotype of the elderly walk on average slower out of the experiment’s room than control (...) subjects – and I show that we cannot say that subjects cannot help walking slower or that they are not free in doing do. I then illustrate how these cases can be reconciled and normalized within a Davidsonian theory of action to show that, in walking slower, subjects are acting intentionally. My argument applies across various experiments, including those of goal priming. In the final section I argue that the only cases in which priming effects are efficacious are so-called Buridan cases. (shrink)

I argue that it is possible for prospective mothers to wrong prospective fathers by bearing their child; and that lifting paternal liability for child support does not correct the wrong inflicted to fathers. It is therefore sometimes wrong for prospective mothers to bear a child, or so I argue here. I show that my argument for considering the legitimate interests of prospective fathers is not a unique exception to an obvious right to procreate. It is, rather, part of a growing (...) consensus that procreation can be morally problematic and that generally talking of rights in this context might not be warranted. Finally, I argue that giving up a right to procreate does not imply nor suggest giving up on women’s absolute right to abort, which I defend. (shrink)

I argue that we should give up the fight to rescue causal theories of action from fundamental challenges such as the problem of deviant causal chains; and that we should rather pursue an account of action based on the basic intuition that control identifies agency. In Section 1 I introduce causalism about action explanation. In Section 2 I present an alternative, Frankfurt’s idea of guidance. In Section 3 I argue that the problem of deviant causal chains challenges causalism in two (...) important respects: first, it emphasizes that causalism fails to do justice to our basic intuition that control is necessary for agency. Second, it provides countless counterexamples to causalism, which many recent firemen have failed to extinguish – as I argue in some detail. Finally, in Section 4 I argue, contra Al Mele, that control does not require the attribution of psychological states as causes. (shrink)

Ought parents, in general, to value being biologically tied to their children? Is it important, in particular, that both parents be biologically tied to their children? I will address these fundamental questions by looking at a fairly new practice within IVF treatments, so-called IVF-with-ROPA ( Reception of Oocytes from Partner ), which allows lesbian couples to „share motherhood‟ with one partner providing the eggs while the other becomes pregnant. I believe that IVF-with-ROPA is, just like other IVF treatments, morally permissible; (...) but here I argue that the increased biological ties which IVF-with-ROPA allows for do not have any particular value beside the satisfaction of a legitimate wish, because there is no intrinsic value in a biological tie between parents and children; further, I argue that equality within parental projects cannot be achieved by redistributing biological ties. (shrink)

I argue that the right to sexual satisfaction of severely physically and mentally disabled people and elderly people who suffer from neurodegenerative diseases can be fulfilled by deploying sex robots; this would enable us to satisfy the sexual needs of many who cannot provide for their own sexual satisfaction; without at the same time violating anybody’s right to sexual self-determination. I don’t offer a full-blown moral justification of deploying sex robots in such cases, as not all morally relevant concerns can (...) be addressed here; rather, I put forward a plausible way of fulfilling acute sexual needs without thereby violating anybody’s sexual rights. (shrink)

In an essay titled Aquinas on the Foundations of Knowledge, Eleonore Stump rejects the idea that Aquinas's epistemology is foundationalist. I agree with Stump, and share in her conviction that the Angelic doctor developed instead what can be seen as a kind of theological reliabilism. In this article, I intend to take her position a step further. First, I would like to show that Thomistic reliabilism falls into a vicious circle if seen as based on a merely rational theism. Second, (...) I am going to argue that for Aquinas such reliabilism depends instead on Christian faith, construed as the act of believing the revealed truth by virtue of the love relationship that God allows human beings to have with him. (shrink)

I defend the argument that if embryo loss in stem cell research is morally problematic, then embryo loss in in vivo conception is similarly morally problematic. According to a recent challenge to this argument, we can distinguish between in vivo embryo loss and the in vitro embryo loss of stem cell research by appealing to the doctrine of double effect. I argue that this challenge fails to show that in vivo embryo loss is a mere unintended side effect while in (...) vitro embryo loss is an intended means and that, even if we refine the challenge by appealing to Michael Bratman's three roles of intention, the distinction is still unwarranted. (shrink)

On Don Marquis’s future of value account of the wrongness of killing, ‘what makes it wrong to kill those individuals we all believe it is wrong to kill, is that killing them deprives them of their future of value’. Marquis has recently argued for a narrow interpretation of his future of value account of the wrongness of killing and against the broad interpretation that I had put forward in response to Carson Strong. In this article I argue that the narrow (...) view is problematic because it violates some basic principles of equality and because it allows for some of the very killing that Marquis sets out to condemn; further, I argue that the chief reason why Marquis chooses the narrow view over the broad view – namely that the broad view would take the killing of some nonhuman animals to be also wrong – should rather be considered a welcome upshot of the broad view. (shrink)

In this essay, I propose two arguments from Thomas Aquinas’s reflection on theism and faith to rebut Schellenberg’s claim that divine hiddenness justifies atheism. One of those arguments, however, may be employed so as to re-propose Schellenberg’s conviction, which is crucial to his argument, that there are ‘non-resistant’ or ‘inculpable’ unbelievers. I then advance what I call the suffering unbeliever argument. In short, the unbelievers mentioned by Schellenberg are expected to suffer because of their non-belief, which—as Schellenberg says—prevents them from (...) achieving the greatest possible well-being. If they suffer, however, they cannot consider themselves unbelievers, since one cannot suffer from not having been given a certain good if one believes that the good in question has never existed. If they do not suffer, on the other hand, there is simply nothing for which they can consider themselves inculpable. (shrink)

A virus has sprung up and spread throughout the world during the 20th century. -/- It has taken hold of people's minds and bodies, it has affected attitudes and directed actions, and it has dominated the life and marked the death of individuals and communities. -/- The name of this virus is statism.