This open access book discusses individual, collective, and institutional responsibilities with regard to vaccination from the perspective of philosophy and public health ethics. It addresses the issue of what it means for a collective to be morally responsible for the realisation of herd immunity and what the implications of collective responsibility are for individual and institutional responsibilities. The first chapter introduces some key concepts in the vaccination debate, such as ‘herd immunity’, ‘public goods’, and ‘vaccine refusal’; and explains why failure (...) to vaccinate raises certain ethical issues. The second chapter analyses, from a philosophical perspective, the relationship between individual, collective, and institutional responsibilities with regard to the realisation of herd immunity. The third chapter is about the principle of least restrictive alternative in public health ethics and its implications for vaccination policies. Finally, the fourth chapter presents an ethical argument for unqualified compulsory vaccination, i.e. for compulsory vaccination that does not allow for any conscientious objection. The book will appeal to philosophers interested in public health ethics and the general public interested in the philosophical underpinning of different arguments about our moral obligations with regard to vaccination. (shrink)

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion (...) is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled. (shrink)

We argue that individuals who have access to vaccines and for whom vaccination is not medically contraindicated have a moral obligation to contribute to the realisation of herd immunity by being vaccinated. Contrary to what some have claimed, we argue that this individual moral obligation exists in spite of the fact that each individual vaccination does not significantly affect vaccination coverage rates and therefore does not significantly contribute to herd immunity. Establishing the existence of a moral obligation to be vaccinated (...) despite the negligible contribution each vaccination can make to the realisation of herd immunity is important because such moral obligation would strengthen the justification for coercive vaccination policies. We show that two types of arguments—namely a utilitarian argument based on Parfit’s Principle of Group Beneficence and a contractualist argument—can ground an individual moral obligation to be vaccinated, in spite of the imperceptible contribution that any single vaccination makes to vaccine coverage rates. We add a further argument for a moral obligation to be vaccinated that does not require embracing problematic comprehensive moral theories such as utilitarianism or contractualism. The argument is based on a “duty of easy rescue” applied to collectives, which grounds a collective moral obligation to realise herd immunity, and on a principle of fairness in the distribution of the burdens that must be borne to realise herd immunity. (shrink)

We address the issue of whether, why and under what conditions, quarantine and isolation are morally justified, with a particular focus on measures implemented in the developing world. We argue that the benefits of quarantine and isolation justify some level of coercion or compulsion by the state, but that the state should be able to provide the strongest justification possible for implementing such measures. While a constrained form of consequentialism might provide a justification for such public health interventions, we argue (...) that a stronger justification is provided by a principle of State Enforced Easy Rescue: a state may permissibly compel individuals to engage in activities that entail a small cost to them but a large benefit to others, because individuals have a moral duty of easy rescue to engage in those activities. The principle of State Enforced Easy Rescue gives rise to an Obligation Enforcement Requirement: the state should create the conditions such that submitting to coercive or compulsive measures becomes a fundamental moral duty of individuals, i.e. a duty of easy rescue. When the state can create such conditions, it has the strongest justification possible for implementing coercive or compulsive measures, because individuals have a moral duty to temporarily relinquish the rights that such measures would infringe. Our argument has significant implications for how public health emergencies in the developing world should be tackled. Where isolation and quarantine measures are necessary, states or the international community have a moral obligation to provide certain benefits to those quarantined or isolated. (shrink)

The nature of pre-reflective self-consciousness—viz., the putative non-inferential self-consciousness involved in unreflective experiences, has become the topic of considerable debate in recent analytic philosophy of consciousness, as it is commonly taken to be what makes conscious mental states first-personally given to its subject. A major issue of controversy in this debate concerns what pre-reflective self-consciousness is an awareness of. Some scholars have suggested that pre-reflective self-consciousness involves an awareness of the experiencing subject. This ‘egological view’ is opposed to the ‘non-egological (...) view’, according to which the subject, in being pre-reflectively self-conscious, is just aware of their own occurrent mental state. In this paper, I argue in favour of the egological view. The argument I develop is a qualified version of a line of reasoning originally provided by Rosenthal and builds on a proper clarification of the ontological status of token mental states. More precisely, I argue that token mental states are structured ‘fact-like’ entities having their subject among their constituents. Accordingly, one cannot be aware of one’s own occurrent mental state without thereby being aware of oneself. (shrink)

In this paper, against a new imagination-based account defended by Anna Ichino in some recent works, I defend the intuitive and traditional idea that so-called religious beliefs are indeed those doxastic attitudes that they are traditionally taken to be, i.e., bona fide beliefs. Yet I take that the objects of such beliefs amount to be different from what religious believers consciously take them to be; namely, they are mythological characters, a species of fictional characters – namely, fictional characters not consciously (...) recognized as such – instead of being concrete individuals possibly endowed with supernatural powers. Yet religious believers also unconsciously recognize the fictional nature of religious objects of belief as mythological characters, as their behavior ultimately shows. This account indeed allows me to give a different yet still doxastic explanation of the two main reasons that Ichino advocates in favor of her account; namely, the incompatibility of so-called religious beliefs with other beliefs and their imperviousness to evidence, especially of a negative kind. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to argue for two main and related points. First, I want to defend Richard Wollheim’s well-known thesis that the twofold mental state of seeing-in is the distinctive pictorial experience that marks figurativity. Figurativity is what makes a representation pictorial, a depiction of its subject. Moreover, I want to show that insofar as it is a mark of figurativity, all seeing-in is inflected. That is to say, every mental state of seeing-in is such that the characterisation (...) of the properties by which a certain subject is seen in a given picture as having refers to the design properties of the picture’s vehicle, i.e., to the visible surface properties of that vehicle that are responsible for the fact that one such subject is seen in it, precisely taken in such a design role. Finally, I will try to show that seeing-in is qualified by inflection independently of whether it is conscious or unconscious seeing-in. (shrink)

In a paper recently published in this journal, Navin and Largent argue in favour of a type of policy to regulate non-medical exemptions from childhood vaccination which they call ‘Inconvenience’. This policy makes it burdensome for parents to obtain an exemption to child vaccination, for example, by requiring parents to attend immunization education sessions and to complete an application form to receive a waiver. Navin and Largent argue that this policy is preferable to ‘Eliminationism’, i.e. to policies that do not (...) allow non-medical exemptions, because Inconvenience has been shown to maintain exemption rates low while not harming parents by forcing them to do something that goes against their beliefs. We argue that it is at least doubtful that Inconvenience is ethically preferable to Eliminationism: while the latter disregards the value of liberty, Inconvenience disregards the value of fairness in the distribution of the burdens entailed by the preservation of a public good like herd immunity. We propose a variant of Inconvenience, which we call ‘Contribution’, which we think is preferable to the versions of Inconvenience discussed by Navin and Largent in that it successfully strikes a balance between the values of parents’ liberty, fairness and expected utility. (shrink)

Conflict of interests in medicine are typically taken to be financial in nature: it is often assumed that a COI occurs when a healthcare practitioner’s financial interest conflicts with patients’ interests, public health interests, or professional obligations more generally. Even when non-financial COIs are acknowledged, ethical concerns are almost exclusively reserved for financial COIs. However, the notion of “interests” cannot be reduced to its financial component. Individuals in general, and medical professionals in particular, have different types of interests, many of (...) which are non-financial in nature but can still conflict with professional obligations. The debate about healthcare delivery has largely overlooked this broader notion of interests. Here, we will focus on health practitioners’ moral or religious values as particular types of personal interests involved in healthcare delivery that can generate COIs and on conscientious objection in healthcare as the expression of a particular type of COI. We argue that, in the healthcare context, the COIs generated by interests of conscience can be as ethically problematic, and therefore should be treated in the same way, as financial COIs. (shrink)

The debate around lockdowns as a response to the recent pandemic is typically framed in terms of a tension between freedom and health. However, on some views, protection of health or reduction of virus‐related risks can also contribute to freedom. Therefore, there might be no tension between freedom and health in public health restrictions. I argue that such views fail to appreciate the different understandings of freedom that are involved in the trade‐off between freedom and health. Grasping these distinctions would (...) allow to appreciate why different people give more weight to different aspects of limitations of freedom, including whether certain options are made simply risky or impossible, whether limitations of freedom are posed intentionally or happen accidentally, whether risks are beyond a threshold of acceptability, and who gets to decide that. I provide a conceptual analysis of the relationship between different types of freedom, public health policies, viruses and diseases. As I argue, identifying what freedom‐based reasons count for and against different types of public health restrictions requires distinguishing between viruses and diseases, between lockdowns and other types of restrictive policies, and between risks posed by viruses and threats of penalties involved by restrictive policies. (shrink)

The first half of this article follows Mario Bunge’s early realist moves, his efforts to articulate the achievements of theoretical physics as gains in the quest for objective truth and understanding, particularly in the context of the fights against the idealist and subjectivist interpretations of quantum mechanics that, at least until the mid-1970s, prevailed in physics. Bunge’s answers to the problems of quantum mechanics provide a good angle for understanding how his realist positions grew on the “battlefield.” The second half (...) discusses Bunge’s general conception of the scientific realist stance and confronts it with some current approaches to realism in the mainstream literature. (shrink)

Recent attempts to turn Standard Quantum Theory into a coherent representational system have improved markedly over previous offerings. Important questions about the nature of material systems remain open, however, as current theorizing effectively resolves into a multiplicity of incompatible statements about the nature of physical systems. Specifically, the most cogent proposals to date land in effective empirical equivalence, reviving old anti-realist fears about quantum physics. In this paper such fears are discussed and found unsound. It is argued that nothing of (...) global skeptical or agnostic significance follows from the kind of underdetermination presently encountered in fundamental quantum theory. The case is instructive, however, for what it shows about the characteristics and prospects of scientific realism as a perspective in contemporary philosophy of science. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es clarificar la noción de «vida auténtica» tal y como es descrita por Joan Roura-Parella en su última obra Tema y variaciones de la personalidad (1950). Por «vida auténtica» se entiende una vida autogobernada, que permite al individuo realizar su propia singularidad y, por tanto, preservar su autonomía y dignidad como persona. Una vida dominada por factores ajenos al propio individuo, sean cuales sean éstos, es una vida alienada, que no permite el desarrollo del individuo (...) en tanto la persona que es. Se señala la relevancia filosófica de la propuesta de Roura-Parella, que es la de ofrecer una justificación no-evidencial para una forma de vida cristiana, agapística. De acuerdo con Roura-Parella, una forma de vida basada en la entrega amorosa para con el prójimo está justificada en tanto que ésta es el resultado último de nuestra propia condición natural, constituyendo así un acto de afirmación personal y siendo, por tanto, condición necesaria para gozar de una vida auténtica — «la vida alcanza su hondo sentido al salirse de sí misma para darse a los demás» (Roura-Parella, Tema y variaciones de la personalidad, 1950, p. 229). Se señalan las diferencias y semejanzas de la propuesta de Roura-Parella con respecto a las de Miguel de Unamuno y Joaquim Xirau, autores que fueron cercanos a Roura-Parella y quienes, aunque partiendo de razonamientos distintos a los de Roura-Parella, también concibieron la entrega amorosa para con el prójimo como un acto de afirmación personal. (shrink)

This article reconstructs Kant's view on the existential import of categorical sentences. Kant is widely taken to have held that affirmative sentences (the A and I sentences of the traditional square of opposition) have existential import, whereas negative sentences (E and O) lack existential import. The article challenges this standard interpretation. It is argued that Kant ascribes existential import only to some affirmative synthetic sentences. However, the reasons for this do not fall within the remit of Kant's formal logic. Unlike (...) traditional logic and modern standard quantification theory, Kant's formal logic is free from existential commitments. (shrink)

The definition of love given by Descartes in the Passions of the Soul has never stopped puzzling commentators. If the first Cartesian textbooks discreetly evoke or even fail to discuss Descartes’s account of love, Spinoza harshly criticizes it, pointing out that it is ‘on all hands admitted to be very obscure’. More recently several scholars have noticed the puzzling character of the articles of the Passions of the Soul on love and hate. In this paper, I would like to propose (...) a reassessment of the definition of love provided by the Passions of the Soul and the Letters to Elisabeth and Chanut. By tracing back Descartes’s scholastic sources, I will demonstrate how Descartes builds up his definition of love by displacing or subverting the meaning of several major elements of the thomistic vulgata on love. Hence, a significant part of the obscurity of the definition given by the Passions of the Soul possibly finds its ultimate rationale in this attempt to recover some traditional questions of the scholastic debate on love, while advancing new answers to them. (shrink)

With the pressing shortage of human organs and recent breakthroughs in gene editing, xenotransplantation—using animal organs, tissues or cells for human transplants—offers new hope for patients on wait lists. The use of genome editing technologies to produce xenotransplants from pigs with reduced immunogenicity has recently brought renewed attention to the field while also raising a host of ethical dilemmas. These concerns include animal welfare, the risks of zoonotic diseases, the moral implications of crossing species boundaries and the potential inequities in (...) access to such treatments. In their article ‘Who shall go first? A multicriteria approach to patient selection for first clinical trials of cardiac xenotransplantation’,1 Kögel and colleagues propose an ethical framework for selecting patients in cardiac xenotransplantation trials. They argue that while significant advances have been made with xenotransplants in brain-dead humans, limited knowledge can be gained from procedures performed outside clinical trials. According to them, knowledge production should be prioritised, and terminally ill patients who are unlikely to survive would not contribute meaningfully to scientific understanding or benefit from the procedure. At the core of xenotransplantation ethics …. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the relation between Christian Wolff's philosophy and the methodological views of early modern experimental philosophers. The chapter argues for three claims. First, Wolff's system relies on experience at every step and his views on experiments, observations, hypotheses, and the a priori are in line with those of experimental philosophers. Second, the study of Wolff's views demonstrates the influence of experimental philosophy in early eighteenth-century Germany. Third, references to Wolff's empiricism and rationalism are best identified or replaced with (...) references to his endorsement of the tenets of experimental philosophers and of a mathematical demonstrative method. (shrink)

The association of resilience-related factors with frailty is a recent research topic. Dispositional optimism and context sensitivity are two psychological factors that differently contribute to individual resilience. This study aimed at investigating whether dispositional optimism and context sensitivity might contribute to a multifactorial model of frailty, together with established relevant factors such as cognitive and physical factors. This cross-sectional study involved 141 elderly outpatients aged ≥65 years, who were referred to the Geriatrics and Multidimensional Evaluation Clinic of the University Hospital (...) of Messina. We used the following measures: the Mini-Mental State Examination to screen for global cognitive functioning; 4-m gait speed and handgrip strength to measure physical performance; a 35-item Frailty Index to evaluate patients’ frailty status; the revised Life Orientation Test to gauge dispositional optimism; and the Context Sensitivity Index to measure context sensitivity. We found that LOT-R, CSI, and MMSE were all significantly associated with FI. Gait speed was only marginally associated with FI. The present study showed a novel association of dispositional optimism and context sensitivity with frailty among elderly outpatients. These preliminary findings support a multidimensional approach to frailty in which even peculiar psychological features might provide a significant contribution. (shrink)

This paper discusses Immanuel Kant’s views on the role of experiments in natural science, focusing on their relationship with hypotheses, laws of nature, and the heuristic principles of scientific enquiry. Kant’s views are contrasted with the philosophy of experiment that was first sketched by Francis Bacon and later developed by Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. Kant holds that experiments are always designed and carried out in the light of hypotheses. Hypotheses are derived from experience on the basis of a set (...) of heuristic principles. The function of experiments is testing hypotheses in order to either reject them as false, or else to transform them into empirical laws of nature. To this end, we must integrate the hypotheses that are confirmed by experiments with the a priori principles which are the foundations of natural science. Compared with Bacon, Boyle, and Hooke, Kant has elaborate views on the one hand, on how our theoretical and pre-theoretical assumptions bear on experimental practice, and on the other hand, on how the results of experimental activity can be integrated with theories to advance our knowledge of nature. However, Kant overstates the dependence of experiments on theories. (shrink)

A comparison is given between two conditions used to define logical constants: Belnap's uniqueness and Hacking's deducibility of identicals. It is shown that, in spite of some surface similarities, there is a deep difference between them. On the one hand, deducibility of identicals turns out to be a weaker and less demanding condition than uniqueness. On the other hand, deducibility of identicals is shown to be more faithful to the inferentialist perspective, permitting definition of genuinely proof-theoretical concepts. This kind of (...) analysis is driven by exploiting the Curry–Howard correspondence. In particular, deducibility of identicals is shown to correspond to the computational property of eta expansion, which is essential in the characterization of propositional identity. (shrink)

In this paper, we want to maintain that the puzzle of imaginative resistance is basically a pragmatic issue due to the failure of participative imagination, as involving a pre-semantic level relating to a wide context (the overall situation of discourse). Since the linguistic meanings of the relevant fiction-involving sentences violate some of our basic norms, what such sentences (fictionally) say cannot be participatively imagined. That failure leads one to refrain from ascribing such sentences the fictional truth-conditions they would have in (...) narrow fictional contexts (sets of fixed parameters) as determined by those meanings in those contexts. Yet one could still make that ascription, for one can cognitively imagine what such sentences would say in those contexts. As is proved by the fact that if one either adopts an alternative view on such norms or, for some reason, brackets them, one can again perform that ascription. (shrink)

That we can learn something from literature, as cognitivists claim, seems to be a commonplace. However, when one considers matters more deeply, it turns out to be a problematic claim. In this paper, by focusing on general revelatory facts about the world and the human spirit, I hold that the cognitivist claim can be vindicated if one takes it as follows. We do not learn such facts from literature, if by “literature” one means the truth-conditional contents that one may ascribe (...) to textual sentences in their fictional use, i.e., in the use in which one makes believe that things unfold in a certain way. What we improperly call learning from literature amounts to knowing actually true conversational implicatures concerning the above facts as meant by literary authors. So, in one and the same shot, we learn both a general revelatory fact and the fact that such a fact is meant via a true conversational implicature by an author. The author draws that implicature from the different truth-conditional content a sentence possesses when the sentence is interpreted in a fictional context, meant as Kaplan’s (1989) narrow context, i.e., a set of circumstantial parameters (agent, space, time, and world). (shrink)

Although the COVID-19 pandemic is a serious public health and economic emergency, and although effective vaccines are the best weapon we have against it, there are groups and individuals who oppose certain kinds of vaccines because of personal moral or religious reasons. The most widely discussed case has been that of certain religious groups that oppose research on COVID-19 vaccines that use cell lines linked to abortions and that object to receiving those vaccine because of their moral opposition to abortion. (...) However, moral opposition to COVID-19 vaccine research can be based on other considerations, both secular and religious. We argue that religious or personal moral objections to vaccine research are unethical and irresponsible, and in an important sense often irrational. They are unethical because of the risk of causing serious harm to other people for no valid reason; irresponsible because they run counter to individual and collective responsibilities to contribute to important public health goals; and in the case of certain kinds of religious opposition, they might be irrational because they are internally inconsistent. All in all, our argument translates into the rather uncontroversial claim that we should prioritize people’s lives over religious freedom in vaccine research and vaccination roll out. (shrink)

We argue that we should provide extra payment not only for extra time worked but also for the extra risks healthcare workers (and those working in healthcare settings) incur while caring for COVID‐19 patients—and more generally when caring for patients poses them at significantly higher risks than normal. We argue that the extra payment is warranted regardless of whether healthcare workers have a professional obligation to provide such risky healthcare. Payment for risk would meet four essential ethical requirements. First, assuming (...) healthcare workers do not have a professional obligation to take on themselves the risks, payments in the form of incentives would preserve autonomy in deciding what risks to take on oneself. Second, even assuming that healthcare workers do have a professional obligation to take on themselves the risks, payments for risk would create fair working conditions by avoiding exploitation. Third, payments for risk would make it more likely that public healthcare systems can discharge their institutional responsibility to provide healthcare in circumstances where healthcare workers may otherwise (perhaps legitimately) opt out. Fourth, payments for risk would guarantee an efficient healthcare system in pandemic situations. Finally, we address two likely objections that some might raise against our proposal, particularly with regard to incentives, namely that such payments or incentives can themselves be coercive and that they represent a form of undue inducement. (shrink)

In this article it is argued that the videogame Far Cry 2 manages to take advantage of the heroic formula so characteristic of the first-person shooter videogame genre in a way that potentially prompts players to reflect on the ethical adequacy of their own decision to immerse themselves in a fictional scenario in which they take the role of a fictional character whose behaviour primarily, if not exclusively, consists in shooting.

Michel Foucault and Roberto Esposito have been two of the most influential biopolitical thinkers of the twentieth century, but their respective approaches to the relationship between life and politics do not address the main problem of the Anthropocene: the relationship between life and energy. Thus, this article analyzes the biophysical limits of biopolitics in the works of Foucault and Roberto Esposito and, to overcome these limits, it proposes to analyze the physiological assembly of the devices of power within the energetic (...) flows of social metabolisms. The article concludes that the physio-political approach to human societies allows us to overcome the biophysical limits of both Foucauldian biopolitics and Esposito's immunological paradigm. (shrink)

In his (2001a) and in some related papers, Tim Crane has maintained that intentional objects are schematic entities, in the sense that, insofar as being an intentional object is not a genuine metaphysical category, qua objects of thought intentional objects have no particular nature. This approach to intentionalia is the metaphysical counterpart of the later Husserl's ontological approach to the same entities, according to which qua objects of thought intentionalia are indifferent to existence. But to buy a metaphysically deflationary approach (...) does not mean to buy an ontologically deflationary approach, according to which we have to accept all the intentional objects there apparently are. Being metaphysically deflationary on intentionalia rather means that from the ontological point of view one must really allow only for those intentionalia for which one is entitled to say that there are such things; typically, for which an ontological proof is available. From metaphysical schematism plus conditional, or partial, ontological committment to intentionalia, further interesting consequences follow. First, this theoretical combination allows one to deal with the ‘too-many entities’ problem (may one fail to accept an ontological proof for an entity of a given kind if she thinks that the entity we would have to be committed to is an entity of another kind?). Second, it allows one to deal with the ‘genuinely true report’ problem (how is it that if we exercise mindreading with respect to a somehow deluded person, we want our reports to come out as really, not merely fictionally, true?). (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a syncretistic theory of depiction, which combines the merits of the main paradigms which have hitherto faced themselves on this issue, namely the perceptualist and semioticist approaches. The syncretistic theory indeed takes from the former its stress on experiential factors and from the latter its stress on conventional factors. But the theory is even more syncretistic than this, for the way it accounts for the experiential factor vindicates several claims defended by different perceptualist theories. (...) In a nutshell, according to the syncretistic theory a picture depicts its subject iff i) it is transformed into an entity-cum-meaning and ii) one has the twofold experience of seeing that subject in the picture qua noninterpreted entity, the image, just in case one consciously misrecognizes it in consciously seeing that image, for that subject resembles the image in some grouping properties (originally labelled Gestalt-qualities in psychology). By appealing to objective resemblance in grouping properties, the theory can vindicate what are nowadays taken to be the most neglected doctrines in the perceptualist camp: objective resemblance theories. By appealing, moreover, to conscious misrecognition, the theory not only squares with both the seeing-in and the recognition theories of depiction, but it also shows the grain of truth in illusion theories of depiction, since conscious misrecognition is a kind of perceptual illusion. (shrink)

GRW models of the physical world are criticized in the literature for involving wave function "tails" that allegedly create fatal interpretive problems and even compromise standard arithmetic. I find such objections both unfair and misguided. But not all is well with the GRW approach. One complaint I articulate in this paper does not have to do with tails as such but with the specific way in which past physical structures linger forever in the total GRW wave function. By pushing the (...) total proposal towards either the "Many Worlds" approach or the Bohmian approach, this feature diminishes extant GRW claims to preferability. I suggest, however, that the problem here is just an artifact of the particular and ultimately optional genre of collapse mechanism chosen by GRW. (shrink)

Along with a well-honoured tradition, we will accept that intentionality is at least a property a thought holds necessarily, i.e., in all possible worlds that contain it; more specifically, a necessary relation, namely the relation of existential dependence of the thought on its intentional object. Yet we will first of all try to show that intentionality is more than that. For we will claim that intentionality is an essential property of the thought, namely a property whose predication to the thought (...) is true in virtue of the identity, or nature, of such a thought. More particularly, for us intentionality will again be a relation, yet a relation of ontological dependence of the thought on its intentional object; specifically, the relation for the thought of being constituted by its object. Moreover, we will try to show that if intentionality is such a constitutive relation for the thought that has it, certain metaphysical consequences ensue. First, an objectual thought, a thought whose content basically consists in its intentional object, is nothing but that object in a certain cogitative modality, or, which is the same, as playing a certain motivational role for the subject entertaining the thought itself (at a certain time). Second, if an objectual thought is nothing but an intentional object in a cogitative modality, such a thought, not only as a type, but also as a token, is an abstract entity. More specifically, an objectual thought-type, an abstract object par excellence, is indeed instantiated by objectual thought-tokens which are again abstract particulars, yet of a specific kind: namely, tropes of a relational sort depending for their existence on their bearers (and possibly also on their temporal location). (shrink)

In this paper I want to hold, first, that one may suitably reconstruct the relevant kind of mental representational states that fiction typically involves, make-beliefs, as contextually unreal beliefs that, outside fiction, are either matched or non-matched by contextually real beliefs. Yet moreover, I want to claim that the kind of make-believe that may yield the mark of fictionality is not Kendall Walton’s invitation or prescription to imagine. Indeed, in order to appeal in terms of make-believe to a specific form (...) of imagination that fiction distinctively involves, one must move away from the realm of norms in order to attain a cognitive realm; namely, one must look at a specific form of metarepresentational state. This metarepresentational state of make-believe is a second-order representation that is about both real beliefs and make-beliefs, as the first-order representations it compares by acknowledging their contextual distinctness. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es explorar la manera en que Joaquim Xirau y Miguel de Unamuno concibieron el amor. A pesar de que no hay motivos suficientes para concluir una influencia directa y filosóficamente relevante de Unamuno en la obra de Xirau, sí podemos concluir que la forma en que ambos autores concibieron el amor guarda ciertas similitudes. Así, ambos coinciden en concebir la entrega amorosa como un ejercicio de afirmación individual que trae consigo un incremento de la propia (...) singularidad. También, tanto Unamuno como Xirau conciben la entrega amorosa como un acto que, aun surgiendo del propio individuo y no de como es de hecho el mundo, personifica aquello amado, dejando de ser así visto como un mero objeto y mostrándose bajo una forma personal. Y ambos, aunque de un modo distinto, hacen del relato bíblico acerca de la vida y Resurrección de Cristo un aspecto central de sus maneras de entender el amor. (shrink)

The ‘tobacco-free generation’ policy, which bans cigarette sales based on birth year, presents a bold public health initiative but raises significant ethical and practical concerns. As behaviours like drug use become legal and criminal penalties are reduced, singling out smoking for generational restriction appears inconsistent within an increasingly permissive society. Kniess1 critiques this approach for creating inequities by selectively limiting freedoms, conflicting with principles of fairness and adult autonomy. A more balanced public health strategy could involve uniform restrictions on harmful (...) substances or prioritising informed personal choice, supported by harm reduction and education to encourage healthier alternatives. The generational smoking ban targets specific birth cohorts, prohibiting tobacco sales to those born after a certain year. Unlike universal bans, it creates two distinct adult classes—those permitted to smoke and those who are not—resulting in an apparently arbitrary division. Critics, including Schmidt,2 point to the ethical inconsistency of restricting liberties for some while leaving others untouched. This policy design has been defended as a pragmatic compromise, aiming to protect future generations without infringing on the established habits of current smokers (Grill and Voigt).3 Kniess1 evaluates this selective restriction through relational egalitarianism which emphasises the importance of equal social relationships. The cut-off, …. (shrink)

In this paper, I will first of all claim that once one takes proper names as indexicals of a particular sort, indexinames for short, one may account for some tensions that affect our desiderata regarding the use of such names in sentences directly or indirectly involving fiction. According to my proposal, a proper name “N.N.” is an indexical whose character is roughly expressed by the description “the individual called ‘N.N.’ (in context)”, where this description means “the individual one’s interlocutor’s attention (...) is called to by means of ‘N.N.’ (in context)”. This character is a partial function that maps narrow contexts onto referents. Such contexts are enriched narrow contexts, for they also include an ‘acquisition’ parameter, i.e., a parameter filled by a naming practice constituted by a dubbing, which consists in calling via the name one’s interlocutor’s attention to something (if any), and usually also by a certain transmission chain. I will also claim that such a proposal works independently of one’s ontological stance on fictional entities, that is, independently of whether one believes either that there are or that there are no such entities. Moreover, I will claim that such a proposal is better than similar indexicalist proposals such as the one put forward by Tiedke (2011), Finally, I will try to show how this proposal can deal with some objections one may raise against an indexicalist treatment of proper names. (shrink)

Spartan institutions were pictured as a model of political stability from the Classical period onwards. The so-called Spartan ‘mirage’ did not involve only its constitutional order but also social and economic institutions. Xenophon begins hisConstitution of the Lacedaemoniansby associating Spartan fame with thepoliteiaset up by Lycurgus, which made the Laconian city the most powerful (δυνατωτάτη) and famous (ὀνομαστοτάτη)polisin Greece (Xen.Lac.1.1). In Aristotle'sPolitics, in which the assessment of Sparta is more complex and nuanced, one finds a critique of contemporary Spartan institutions (...) as well as praise for Lycurgus as a great lawgiver who established the laws of Sparta (Arist.Pol.2.1269a69, 2.1273b20). Most other ancient sources often remark upon the unchangeable features of some Spartan institutions as a key aspect of Spartan εὐνομία. Thucydides maintains that, after a long period of war andstasis, the Dorians established excellent laws and Sparta employed the same constitution for more than four hundred years (Thuc. 1.18.1: τετρακόσια καὶ ὀλίγῳ πλείω ἐς τὴν τελευτὴν τοῦδε τοῦ πολέμου ἀφ᾽ οὗ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τῇ αὐτῇ πολιτείᾳ χρῶνται). (shrink)

Gestützt auf die bisher unveröffentlichten Teile des Briefwechsels von Leibniz mit Denis Papin aus der Zeit von 1692 bis 1700 wird in diesem Aufsatz versucht, einige Aspekte der Leibnizschen Dynamik darzulegen. Insbesondere wird der apriorische Beweis der Erhaltung der actio f ormalis im Zusammenhang mit der Diskussion zwischen Leibniz und Papin über die Messung der Kraft bei der horizontalen Bewegung behandelt. Es war Leibniz* Absicht, durch den apriorischen Beweis die Dynamik zu begründen und die Cartesianischen Gesetze der Bewegung zu ersetzen. (...) Papin seinerseits beschränkte sich auf die physikalische Ebene der Gesetze der Mechanik. Im Laufe der Debatte entwickelte Leibniz als Antwort auf Papins Kritik wichtige Argumente über die metaphysische Begründung der Dynamik. Die Begriffe actio f ormalis, inertia naturalis, entelecheia und Geschwindigkeit als quantitas intensiva werden in diesem Zusammenhang von Leibniz gegen Papins Einwände verteidigt. (shrink)

Cultural evolution researchers use transmission chain experiments to investigate which content is more likely to survive when transmitted from one individual to another. These experiments resemble oral storytelling, wherein individuals need to understand, memorize, and reproduce the content. However, prominent contemporary forms of cultural transmission—think an online sharing—only involve the willingness to transmit the content. Here I present two fully preregistered online experiments that explicitly investigated the differences between these two modalities of transmission. The first experiment (_N_ = 1,080 participants) (...) examined whether negative content, information eliciting disgust, and threat-related information were better transmitted than their neutral counterpart in a traditional transmission chain setup. The second experiment (_N_ = 1,200 participants) used the same material, but participants were asked whether or not they would share the content in two conditions: in a large anonymous social network or with their friends, in their favorite social network. Negative content was both better transmitted in transmission chain experiments and shared more than its neutral counterpart. Threat-related information was successful in transmission chain experiments but not when sharing, and finally, information eliciting disgust was not advantaged in either. Overall, the results present a composite picture, suggesting that the interactions between the specific content and the medium of transmission are important and, possibly, that content biases are stronger when memorization and reproduction are involved in the transmission—as in oral transmission—than when they are not—as in online sharing. Negative content seems to be reliably favored in both modalities of transmission. (shrink)

In this paper we clarify some issues related to our previous article ‘After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?’.

The paper frames the issue of intergenerational justice by addressing an historical source and a theoretical difficulty. In relation to the historical point of view, the paper offers a preliminary re-reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights aimed at revealing the intergenerational commitment that lies behind it (§1). In addressing the second point, it presents the issue of intergenerational justice from a phenomenological perspective (§2). In developing such a perspective, the paper articulates a comprehensive ethical question that is constitutively (...) related to any possible shaping of an intergenerational justice theory (§3). In turn, the explanation of that question presents the opportunity to propose a theory of motivation for the elaboration and implementation of policies explicitly aimed at fulfilling the intergenerational need, beyond any skepticism arising from pragmatic objections. Finally, the paper proposes to address this need by presenting a model of obligation ranking in which the flexibility and strength of the normative bond for the present generation and future ones are considered (§4). (shrink)