The range of opportunities people enjoy in life largely depends on social, biological, and genetic factors for which individuals are not responsible. Philosophical debates about equality of opportunities have focussed mainly on addressing social determinants of inequalities. However, the introduction of human bioenhancement should make us reconsider what our commitment to equality entails. We propose a way of improving morally relevant equality that is centred on what we consider a fair distribution of bioenhancements. In the first part, we identify three (...) main positions in the debate on bioenhancement and equality, and we show how each of them fails to meet the demands of a serious commitment to equality. In the second part, we formulate a new proposal that we think better promotes equality of opportunities: people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds should be given access to bioenhancements while people from privileged socio-economic background should be prohibited from using them. We argue that those who are concerned about the inequality implications of bioenhancement should embrace this solution, rather than reject bioenhancement. (shrink)

Born in 1945, John Lane Bell is not only one of the greatest logicians of our time, but he is also one the most gifted in the art of writing, as witnessed by the success of his introductory texts, many of which were originally written as lecture notes: their essential clarity is an exemplar of the Attic style. More generally, Bell’s works are a rare example of how rigour and sophisticated elegance can coexist.

The fierce debates surrounding the 'emergence' of Muslim communities in Europe ensued in the resurgence of nationalism. The current article introduces an original criticism to the ongoing debates surrounding the return of Europe's national pride. This article suggests that Muslim demands for freedom of religion that were founded in Islamic theological perspectives, have catalyzed the restriction of liberal universalistic perspectives to such freedoms. In this study I present how such demands facilitated the advancement of a newly crafted liberal form of (...) nationalism, best identified in Europe's progressing limitation of the right of freedom of religion in various European nations. (shrink)

Les Cahiers noirs de Martin Heidegger ont suscité des réactions si divergentes qu’il n’est pas illégitime de s’interroger sur la cause de cette plurivocité. Est-il possible qu’une série de textes produise des réactions si discordantes – de la minimisation à l’exaspération, du sarcasme à la caricature, du scandale à l’excommunication? Il est opportun de chercher dans les Cahiers noirs les racines de cette fragmentation. Cet article soutenir la thèse selon laquelle la structure et les contenus mêmes des Cahiers noirs porteraient (...) en eux une sorte de double contrainte entre le dessin antimétaphysique et la « rechute » dans une métaphysique puissance deux : une contradiction interne à la trame des Cahiers noirs, qui produit deux figures de pensée incompatibles entre elles mais qui représente le contenu philosophique le plus précieux de ces textes. (shrink)

John of Scythopolis, the first scholiast of the Corpus Dionysiacum, played a role in the debates that took place after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and contributed in an original way to the development of Christological dogma in preparation for the Council of Constantinople II in 553. In particular, he uses the theopaschite formula both in its so-called “Alexandrian” version as well as in that attributed to the Scythian monks. Several instances of the formula occur in three of his (...) Scholia on Dionysius’s De divinis nominibus and show both his concentration upon the hypostasis of the Word as well as his identification of Christ with the Lovgoç. In this way, he looks for a new via media within Christological doctrine that truly can be called “Neo-chalcedonian.”. (shrink)

Alireza Bagheri supports a policy on organ procurement where individuals could choose their own definition of death between two or more socially accepted alternatives. First, we claim that such a policy, without any criterion to distinguish accepted from acceptable definitions, easily leads to the slippery slope that Bagheri tries to avoid. Second, we suggest that a public discussion about the circumstances under which the dead donor rule could be violated is more productive of social trust than constantly moving the line (...) between life and death. (shrink)

El 3 de enero de 1889, en Turín, se produjo la primera crisis que callaría a aquel que se llamaba a sí mismo Dionisos o el Crucificado, o ambos a la vez. Ya en Basilea, a Nietzsche se le había diagnosticado "parálisis progresiva". En Jena, los médicos supusieron una infección sifilítica que se remontaba hacia 1866. Paradójicamente, a fines del mismo mes de enero se publicaba El ocaso de los ídolos y en la primavera de ese mismo año, cuando Nietzsche (...) parecía haberse olvidado de todo lo referente a su obra y de sí mismo, se publicaba Nietzsche contra Wagner. (shrink)

_Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe_ investigates the evolution of scholarly practices and the transformation of cognitive habits in the early modern age, focussing on the development of note-taking systems and data storage devices.

Over and above differences in terminology and cultural background, we try to show that the quantum physicist, David Bohm, and poststructuralist philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, shared a common aim in thought: to replace the classical image of reality, which is still dominant in our time, with a metaphysics finally in agreement with the concepts and results of relativity, quantum mechanics andcontemporary biology. For these two thinkers, the world of things that are well individuated in space and time, and ordered according to (...) mechanical relations of cause and effect, are nothing but the momentary expression of an “undivided wholeness in flowing movement” that constitutes its true ontological ground. By means of this new metaphysics, the world of daily experience and classical science appears as the explicit manifestation or development of implicate order that undivided wholeness contains virtually in itself at deeper and deeper levels of envelopment and imbrication. The explicit world is the result of a process of repetition, deceleration and temporal stabilization, triggered by the interaction of our measuring instruments – technical devices, sensory organs and motors, a priori forms and categories of the understanding – with moving wholeness, the thinking and observing subject of which represents a momentary and partial reflection rather than a solitaryand autonomous fragment. By criticizing the classical image of thecorrespondence/adequation of being and thought, Bohm and Deleuzeshow that the thought seeking to grasp this wholeness in flowingmovement inevitably interacts with it – by modifying, recreating andaccomplishing it in one direction rather than another. Thought thusresembles a dance that tries to harmonize with the universal flux thatgenerates and carries it away in a single movement with matter. **************************************************************************************************** ***********************Para além das diferenças de terminologia e de background cultural, tenta-se aqui mostrar que o físico quântico David Bohm e o filósofo pós-estruturalista Gilles Deleuze tiverem um objetivo comum de pensamento: substituir a imagem clássica da realidade, ainda dominante em nossa época, por uma metafísica finalmente de acordo com os conceitos e resultados da relatividade, da mecânica quântica e da biologia contemporânea. Para estes dois pensadores, o mundo das coisas bem individuadas no espaço e no tempo, e ordenadas conforme as relações mecânicas de causa e efeito, não é nada outro que a expressão momentânea de uma “Totalidade indivisa em devir” que constitui seu verdadeiro fundamento ontológico. Pelo meio desta nova metafisica, o mundo da experiência cotidiana e da ciência clássica aparece como a manifestação explicita ou desenvolvida da ordem implícita que a totalidade indivisa contém virtualmente nela mesma em níveis de envolvimento e de imbricação sempre mais profundos. O mundo explícito é o resultado de um processo de repetição, desaceleração e estabilização temporal, desencadeado pela interação de nossos instrumentos de medição -- aparelhos técnicos, órgãos sensoriais e motores, formas “a priori” e categorias do entendimento – com uma totalidade movente no qual o sujeito pensante e observante representa um reflexo momentâneo e parcial ao invés de um fragmento solitário e autônomo. Ao criticar a imagem clássica da correspondência/adequação entre o ser e o pensamento, Bohm e Deleuze mostram finalmente que o pensamento que intenta capturar esta Totalidade em devir interage inevitavelmente com ela, modificando-a, recriando-a e realizando-a em uma direção ao invés de outra. O pensamento se aparenta assim a uma dança que tenta se harmonizar com o flux universal que o gera e o leva em um movimento só com a matéria.Palavras-chave: Bohm; Deleuze; totalidade indivisa em devir; física quântica; pós-estruturalismo; ontologia. (shrink)

A careful observation of the phenomenon of human life allows us to understand that from the beginning of the human life cycle until its destruction, the existence of each subject is deeply marked b...

Current research in Explainable AI includes post-hoc explanation methods that focus on building transparent explaining agents able to emulate opaque ones. Such agents are naturally required to be accurate and trustworthy. However, what it means for an explaining agent to be accurate and trustworthy is far from being clear. We characterize accuracy and trustworthiness as measures of the distance between the formal properties of a given opaque system and those of its transparent explanantes. To this aim, we extend Probabilistic Computation (...) Tree Logic with operators to specify degrees of accuracy and trustworthiness of explaining agents. We also provide a semantics for this logic, based on a multi-agent structure and relative model-checking algorithms. The paper concludes with a simple example of a possible application. (shrink)

The Platonist view in philosophy of linguistics states that grammars are theories of abstract objects. In this paper I will focus on the Platonist view in philosophy of linguistics as stated in Katz's "An Outline of Platonist Grammar" (1984) and Soames' "Linguistics and Psychology" (1984) and "Semantics and Psychology" (1985). I will begin explaining which are the core ideas of the Platonist view in philosophy of linguistics. Then, I will comment on the argument offered by Katz's in order to argue (...) for the Platonist view. Finally, I will explain Soames' arguments in order to show that psychology and linguistics are conceptually and empirically different. (shrink)

L’objectiu d’aquesta comunicació és posar de manifest el contingut de l’obra Les fonts de la ciència de l’educació [The Sources of a Science of Education (1929)], on Dewey defensa la possibilitat de dotar de caràcter científic la disciplina de l’educació i respon a alguns dels principals interrogants que aquesta possibilitat suscita. -/- [Referència: OYA, A. “John Dewey: el caràcter científic de l’educació” [“John Dewey: The Scientific Character of Education”]. In Monserrat i Molas, Josep; Roviró, Ignasi, eds. 2019. Col·loquis de Vic (...) (XXIII). L’educació. Barcelona (Spain): Institut d’Estudis Catalans, pp. 45–48 (ISBN: 978–84–9965–495–9).]. (shrink)

A mudanza climática representa un desafío urxente para as democracias modernas e para as formas de acción colectiva organizadas para loitar contra as consecuencias das alteracións climáticas. Ante isto, poden os sistemas democráticos evolucionar para enfrontar estes desafíos? O presente traballo deseña unha reformulación da democracia liberal baseada en dous principios xerais: a sostenibilidade e a democratización da democracia. Tendo en consideración que as consecuencias xeradas pola mudanza climática terán un impacto considerábel nas formas sociais de organización, analizarei o vencello (...) entre sostenibilidade e democracia; en primeiro lugar, para definir de que vou falar cando falo de sostenibilidade. En segundo lugar, para estudar como os novos riscos orixinados polas alteracións climáticas esixen dunha revisión das formas representativas de democracia. (shrink)

The main argument of this article is based on a functional disanalogy, between what I will call ‘international humanity-based law’, constituted by human rights and criminal law, and the domestic rule of law. If we adopt a functionalist approach, the attention has to be focused both on Rule of Law’s pragmatical objective – a reasonable stability – and on its means – formalism and legality, for dealing with indeterminacy. Do international key players share such values, embedded in the Rule of (...) Law’s political project? Does humanity-based international law fulfil the requirements of the Rule of Law? The conclusion of this work is that institutions and mechanism to which usually legal scholars refer when stating that a legal order is a Rule of Law, are almost absent in humanity-based international law. That implies that radical indeterminacy is, in humanity issues, a too strong obstacle for achieving the ideal of the Rule of Law. (shrink)

Sally Haslanger's notion of ‘pure structural oppression’ is the idea of an institution or structure that is unjust independent of any and all agential wrongdoing, and for which no agent is liable. Haslanger argues that pure structural oppression is possible, but she does not defend it as a viable phenomenon in the actual world. The rough equivalent of ‘pure structural oppression’ in the racial domain is the ‘racism without racists hypothesis’. This is the claim that institutional racism without racist agents (...) is not just logically possible but probable under some set of viable circumstances. My aim in this paper is to clarify and assess two arguments for the racism without racists hypothesis. These are Haslanger's and Joshua Glasgow's arguments. I explain the limitations of their arguments as well as the general limitations of the hypothesis for a theory of racism. (shrink)

In this paper I want to claim, first, that despite close similarities, noneism and Crane’s psychological reductionism are different ontological doctrines. For unlike the latter, the former is ontologically committed to objects that are nonentities. Once one splits ontological from existential commitment, this claim, I guess, is rather uncontroversial. Second, however, I want to claim something more controversial; namely, that this ontological interpretation of noneism naturally makes noneism be nonstandardly read as a form of allism, to be however appropriately distinguished (...) from Quinean allism in terms of the different scope of the overall ontological domain on which the only particular/existential quantifier that there is ranges. This may orient a noneist towards a syncretistic view of existence, according to which, appearances notwithstanding, existence as a whole is captured both by means of second-order and by means of first-order related notions. (shrink)

El artículo intenta mostrar la unión entre el mundo civil y el mundo metafísico como un principio rector de la antropología, la gnoseología y la teoría política de Vico. La relación entre sentido común y libre albedrío es examinada en conexión con las modificaciones de la mente y con la Práctica de la Ciencia Nueva. This paper aims to show that the connection between the civil and the metaphysical world is a ruling principle in Vico’s anthropology, in his epistemology and (...) his political philosophy as well. The relationship holding between common sense and free will related with the modifications of mind and with the Practic of the New Science is finally assessed. (shrink)

“Matrixes and Frames: Two Figures of Norm Functioning in the Work of Judith Butler”. The concepts of “intelligibility matrix” and “frame”, each corresponding to different periods in the thought of the feminist philosopher Judith Butler, seem to converge in so many aspects that one is tempted to hold that they may be used indistinctly. Nevertheless, the problem this paper deals with is the possible uniqueness the usage of the latter concept involves, thus pointing to the differences between both concepts. I (...) aim to solve the problem by studying the main sources that Butler herself uses in order to formulate the concept of frame, and by putting in evidence that which is gained by the use of that notion. I also aim to show more clearly the difference between the two concepts by appealing to their functions in the critique of speciffical cultural phenomenon: pornography as a frame and element of the heterosexual matrix. (shrink)