Gathers the pre-Sand Country Almanac writings of Aldo Leopold, showing that he was not born an ecologist, but evolved over time through experimentation and thought.

introduction Dialectic and the notion of tradition The past does not pull back but presses forward. (Hannah Arendt 1977: 10) Through the confrontation over ...

Advance directives have been hailed for two decades as the best way to safeguard patients’ autonomy when they are totally or partially incompetent. In many national contexts they are written into law and they are mostly associated with end-of-life decisions. Although advocates and critics of ADs exchange relevant empirical and theoretical arguments, the debate is inconclusive. We argue that this is so for good reasons: the ADs’ project is fraught with tensions, and this is the reason why they are both (...) important and deeply problematic. We outline six such tensions, and conclude with some positive suggestions about how to better promote patients’ autonomy in end-of-life decision. We argue that ADs should continue to be an option but they cannot be the panacea that they are expected to be. (shrink)

English summary: Aldo Giorgio Gargani innovates in his use of Wittgensteinian concepts to argue that the formation of scientific and philosophical knowledge is not a linear progression, but a collection of instruments or conceptual and behavioral models, decisional procedures that are born of the different forms of human life as extensions of their anthropological contexts. Through this book Gargani demonstrates how Wittgensteins thinking can be used a truly efficient toolbox. French description: Aldo Giorgio Gargani (1933-2009) fait dans ce (...) livre un usage novateur des concepts wittgensteiniens pour soutenir que la formation du savoir scientifique et philosophique n'est pas une progression lineaire, cumulative et definitive de techniques cognitives: le savoir est plutot un recueil d'instruments, d'habitus conceptuels, de modeles comportementaux, de conduites operationnelles et de procedures decisionnelles qui naissent des formes de vie des hommes, en tant qu'extensions de leurs contextes anthropologiques. Si l'expression savoir sans fondements est maintenant tres repandue dans les sciences humaines, c'est Gargani qui a magistralement elabore toutes les consequences de cette idee, et son livre est l'analyse la plus riche de ces rituels epistemologiques qui decoulent de notre agir humain, lui-meme depourvu de fondements. A travers ce livre on voit comment la pensee de Wittgenstein peut etre utilisee comme une boite a outils veritablement efficace. (shrink)

Bioethics laws in France have just undergone a revision process. The bioethics debate is often cast in terms of ethical principles and norms resisting emerging social and technological practices. This leads to the expression of confrontational attitudes based on widely differing interpretations of the same principles and values, and ultimately results in a deadlock. In this paper I would like to argue that focusing on values, as opposed to norms and principles, provides an interesting perspective on the evolution of norms. (...) As Joseph Raz has convincingly argued, “life-building” values and practices are closely intertwined. Precisely because values have a more indeterminate meaning than norms, they can be cited as reasons for action by concerned stakeholders, and thus can help us understand how controversial practices, e.g. surrogate motherhood, can be justified. Finally, norms evolve when the interpretations of the relevant values shift and cause a change in the presumptions implicit in the norms. Thus, norms are not a prerequisite of the ethical solution of practical dilemmas, but rather the outcome of the decision-making process itself. Struggling to reach the right decision in controversial clinical ethics situations indirectly causes social and moral values to change and principles to be understood differently. (shrink)

The French bioethics laws of 1994 contain the principles of the anonymity and non commodification of all donations of body parts and products including gametes in medically assisted reproduction. The two revisions of the law, in 2004 and 2011 have upheld the rule. In view of the latest revision process, the French government organized a large public consultation in 2009. Within the event a “consensus conference” was held in Rennes about different aspects of assisted reproduction. In what follows we shall (...) first describe the anonymity clause for gamete donations in the French law and the debates surrounding it. We shall then analyse the procedure used for the 2009 public consultation and the related consensus conference, as well as its upshot concerning the anonymity doctrine. In this respect we shall compare the citizens’ own recommendations on the gamete anonymity issue and its translation in the consultation’s final report drafted by a philosopher mandated by the organizing committee. Whereas the final report cited some fundamental ethical arguments as reason for upholding the provisions of the law—most notably the refusal of the ‘all biological’ approach to reproductive issues—citizens were more careful and tentative in their position although they also concluded that for pragmatic reasons the anonymity rule should continue to hold. We shall argue that the conservative upshot of the public consultation is due to some main underlying presuppositions concerning the citizens’ role and expertise as well as to the specific design of the consensus conference. Our conclusion will be that public consultations and consensus conferences can only serve as an empirical support for devising suitable bioethics norms by using second-order normative assumptions. (shrink)

While in Europe the debate over clinical ethics consultants’ expertise and professionalization is ongoing, in France it remains rather marginal. In this article, we illustrate how the “commitment model” adopted by the Clinical Ethics Center of the Greater Paris University Hospitals situates itself in such a debate. We first present the commitment model by drawing upon an emblematic case of consultation, and then describe, in turn, its understandings of democratic expertise and of the professionalization of clinical ethics consultation. Accordingly, the (...) commitment model advocates against individual consultants’ certification, but it does not rule out the need for training nor a certain form of professionalization of clinical ethics consultation services. (shrink)

Dans cet article sont examinés les différents sens du mot «probable» tel qu'il apparaît dans certains commentaires desTopiques d'Aristote, notamment ceux d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise, d'Averroès et surtout celui d'Agostino Nifo, ainsi que dans des traités qui s'en inspirent, notamment leDe dialogo de Carlo Sigonio et leDe inventione dialectica de Rudolph Agricola. On retrouve dans ces écrits les trois sens principaux de ce mot depuis Aristote et Cicéron: celui d'opinion communément admise, celui d'opinion qui correspond à «ce qui se passe la plupart (...) du temps» et celui d'opinion apte à produire la persuasion. À partir de cette polysémie du mot «probable», l'article met en évidence les différentes fonctions attribuées aux opinions probables dans ces divers écrits, plus particulièrement au XVIe siècle. L'association du mot «probable» avec la notion de vérité contingente conduit à mettre en valeur le lien entre hypothèse probable et conjecture. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Most medical learned societies have endorsed both "equivalence" between all forms of withholding or withdrawing treatment and the "discontinuity" between euthanasia and practices to withhold or withdraw treatment. While the latter are morally acceptable insofar as they consist in letting the patient die, the former constitutes an illegitimate act of actively interfering with a patient's life. The moral distinction between killing and letting die has been hotly debated both conceptually and empirically, most notably by experimental philosophers, with inconclusive results. This (...) article employs a "revisionary" intuititionist perspective to discuss the results of a clinical ethics study about intensivists' perceptions of withhold or withdraw decisions. The results show that practitioners' moral experience is at odds with both the discontinuity and equivalence theses. This outcome allows us to revisit certain concepts, such as intention and causal relationship, that are prominent in the conceptual debate. Intensivists also regard end-of-life decisions as being on a scale from least to most active, and whether they regard active forms of end-of-life decisions as ethically acceptable depends on the overarching professional values they endorse: the patient's best chances of survival, or the patient's quality of life. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to show an intrinsic contradiction of contemporary Metaphysical Realism by focusing on the relation between the subject and the object. Metaphysical Realism considers facts and objects as being empirical, and therefore they are considered in relation to the subject, while at the same time facts are assumed to belong to an autonomous and independent reality. However, if a real object is considered to be independent from the subject, once it enters in a relation with the (...) latter, a real object must undergo an intrinsic transformation. However, since an object cannot avoid this transformation then recovering the real or “absolute” object from the perceived object is not possible. In this way, the inherent contradiction of the “absolute” as being determined, i.e., defined by virtue of a limit, is revealed. (shrink)

This paper is about the use of analogical reasoning, models and metaphors in Galileo's discovery of the mountains of the moon, which he describes in the Starry Messenger, a short but groundbreaking treatise published in 1610. On the basis of the observations of the Moon he has made with the newly invented telescope, Galileo shows that the Moon has mountains and that therefore it shares the same solid, opaque and rugged nature of the Earth. I will first reconstruct Galileo's reasoning, (...) and illustrate the counterintuitive and quasi-circular way in which discovery depends on analogy: in order for analogical reasoning to succeed in bridging ontological gaps and thus serve as a discovery tool, a certain similarity between what are considered as radically different domains has to be presupposed. More particularly, in order for analogical reasoning to lead to genuine discoveries, salient features have to be selected in the source domain that will be mapped onto the target domain. There is disagreement as to how this mapping is successfully carried out: the syntactical, pragmatic and ontological-categorical approaches, all illuminate some features of this selection in the mapping process. On the basis of an analysis of Galileo's discovery, I will argue that we need a different "bootstrapping" approach which involves the construction of an imaginary temporary model encompassing both the source and the target domains, and which is occasionally strengthened by metaphors which serve as incomplete transitional models. (shrink)

We are at the moment experiencing renewed interest in the life and work of Aldo Capitini, the Italian philosopher of nonviolence, who was born in Perugia in 1899 and died there in 1968. Conferences, publications, and meetings are drawing the Italian public's attention to his pure lifestyle, deeply marked first by the courageous choice to oppose fascism, then by the long period during which he was marginalized by the university world and official culture; but attention has also been drawn (...) to his numerous writings (from his Elementi di una esperienza religiosa, published in 1937 at the height of the fascist regime, with the help of Benedetto Croce, to Religione aperta, one of the last books to be placed on the Index by the Catholic Church, and finally the essay Attraverso due terzi del secolo, which appeared posthumously in Guido Calogero's journal La Cultura), and to his tireless activity as the driving force behind movements and initiatives (it was Capitini, amongst others, who organised the first peace march from Perugia to Assisi in 1961). (shrink)

An elderly patient in his early eighties is hospitalized in a long-term facility, with advanced Alzheimer disease. He is otherwise relatively strong and free from other life-threatening conditions, except for the fact that he has difficulties swallowing. After several episodes of acute aspiration pneumonia doctors prescribe “strict fast”: only hydration through an IV catheter should be administered during the night, in order to relieve the feeling of hunger, provide comfort, and stave off death. The patient is surrounded by a warm (...) and extremely close-knit Mediterranean family. His wife and six adult children take turns feeding him properly mixed food twice a day and prefer to take the risk of causing another... (shrink)

This article demonstrates the value of French philosophy of science for medical practice through an exposition of Michel Serres’s philosophy of the body. It explores how Serres’s examination of the similarity between scientific models and works of art can provide insight into different conceptions of the human body. What makes Serres’s method of unique is that it does not see art and literature as subordinate to the natural sciences: they are both involved in mapping the communication lines of the body. (...) Since early modernity, we can roughly speak of three successive communication models of the body: mechanical, thermodynamic and informational. This article finally discusses the relationship between those different conceptions and explains how they help to articulate different aspects of the body, health, and medical ethics. (shrink)

El término nuestroamericano —utilizado por Horacio Cerutti— tiene sus fundamentos en el concepto "Nuestra América". Este hilo conductor de pensamiento tiene como hecho ineludible el hacerse cargo de la realidad en que se vive y del lugar en donde se está, hecho expresado en un permanente interés en la identidad cultural y nacional, como también por una lectura crítica y explicativa del desarrollo de las ideas. En el caso de Chile, a nuestro juicio, la memoria filosófica nuestroamericana ha tendido a (...) ser borrada, olvidada, siendo obnubilada por un fuerte eurocentrismo, lo que ha dado como resultado un escaso número de filósofos preocupados por "lo latinoamericano". Así, este trabajo indaga sobre los orígenes de la vertiente latinoamericanista en la filosofía chilena en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. A modo de conclusión, proponemos que no es sino hasta los años ochenta cuando, desde el Círculo de Filosofía de la Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, se genera un punto de inflexión con la tradición filosófica chilena, dando origen de forma más nítida a la vertiente nuestroamericana que, antes de esto, solo habría tenido pequeñas huellas dispersas. (shrink)

El lenguaje es esencialmente metafórico. Sin embargo, esto no conlleva a que todo el tiempo nos encontremos sumergidos en la retórica o la figuración para referir el mundo o para nuestros esquemas de comunicación, sino que más bien la proposición hace hincapié en la lógica metafórica sobre la que construimos nuestros esquemas conceptuales. Entendiendo la metáfora como traslatio, traslación, transposición y, por ende, movimiento, el presente trabajo analiza la presencia cognitiva, conceptual y sensorial de la metáfora en el lenguaje. Los (...) esquemas lingüísticos del ser humano trabajan a partir de una lógica metafórica y estética en tanto sensible y mimética. (shrink)

Cases—be they real or fictional—are commonplace both in the medical ethics literature and in the public media. Cases take on a variety of forms: from streamlined to book length narratives. They also serve a variety of different purposes, from illustration, to decision making, and from debunking to heuristics. Drawing on the rhetorical analysis of « exemplum », I shall describe what cases are, and what their role is in the practice of clinical ethics. I identify two basic ways in which (...) cases can be brought to bear on ethical thinking and practice: a « tamed » and a « wild » way, and show how « wild cases » can serve a useful heuristic function despite their appeal to emotions and their unusual and striking character. In conclusion, I will argue that cases, both in their wild and their tamed form, are not only useful pedagogical tools, but can serve as a legitimate empirical basis for medical ethics. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to compare different conceptions of the role of (normative) coherence in the legal field. More precisely, it aims to deepen Neil MacCormick's theory of legal reasoning, in which coherence is essentially considered an interpretative tool, and Ronald Dworkin's legal theory, in which coherence occupies a more crucial place. The main results of this paper can be summarized in two points. A) For Dworkin, coherence is not just an interpretative standard but constitutes the hard core (...) of his theory of law. B) As a consequence of A, Dworkin's reflections on coherence (as an interpretative standard) cannot be separated from his theory of law grounded on the concept of integrity. (shrink)

The IKt-algebras that we investigate in this paper were introduced in the paper An algebraic axiomatization of the Ewald’s intuitionistic tense logic by the first and third author. Now we characterize by topological methods the subdirectly irreducible IKt-algebras and particularly the simple IKt-algebras. Finally, we consider the particular cases of finite IKt-algebras and complete IKt-algebras.

In modern studies it has been largely denied that the so-called “secret doctrine” (which would be more correct to call “private teaching”) of the Theaetetus can be traced back to Protagoras. However, reasons why this doctrine can not be his own, have never been explained. At the same time, an appropriate justification of the hypothesis that it would be considered a pure Platonic creation has never been offered, nor was explained why it would be attributed to followers of Protagoras, but (...) not to Protagoras himself. This article examines the Platonic text in an analytical way, shows how Plato repeatedly attributes to the sophist of Abdera the content of this doctrine, and, based on fragments of Protagoras and other doctrines related to him by ancient sources, it is evident that nothing in Protagorean concepts comes into conflict with Theaetetus so-called “secret doctrine”, and how actually is completely coherent with it. (shrink)

The algorithm has become an increasingly important concept in understanding human behavior in recent years. In the case of sport, human bodies are seen as superficial to the driving force of the algorithm, whether it be genetic, behavioral or surveillance-technological algorithms (Harari Citation2015, 2020; Zuboff Citation2019). However, the French mathematician and philosopher Michel Serres (1930–2019) structurally relate algorithms to sports and bodily experience at multiple places in his oeuvre. According to Serres, sport actually enables us to reprogram and rewrite our (...) behavior, moods and thoughts, and therefore modifies our algorithmic status (Serres Citation1999, Citation2019). Against deterministic conceptions of the body, Serres argues that human bodies possess a ‘metamorphic’ nature that is similar to the procedural character of computer programs. This paper investigates the relationship between the algorithm and bodily existence through a reading of both Harari and Serres on sport. It will be argued that, against deterministic conceptions of the algorithm, the algorithm can actually broaden an understanding of the role of sports and physical activity. (shrink)

A commentary on “The Ethics of Anonymous Gamete Donation: Is There a Right to Know One's Genetic Origins?” by Inmaculada de Melo‐Martín, in the March‐April 2014 issue.

Measurement is a process aimed at acquiring and codifying information about properties of empirical entities. In this paper we provide an interpretation of such a process comparing it with what is nowadays considered the standard measurement theory, i.e., representational theory of measurement. It is maintained here that this theory has its own merits but it is incomplete and too abstract, its main weakness being the scant attention reserved to the empirical side of measurement, i.e., to measurement systems and to the (...) ways in which the interactions of such systems with the entities under measurement provide a structure to an empirical domain. In particular it is claimed that (1) it is on the ground of the interaction with a measurement system that a partition can be induced on the domain of entities under measurement and that relations among such entities can be established, and that (2) it is the usage of measurement systems that guarantees a degree of objectivity and intersubjectivity to measurement results. As modeled in this paper, measurement systems link the abstract theory of measuring, as developed in representational terms, and the practice of measuring, as coded in standard documents such as the International Vocabulary of Metrology. (shrink)

This paper offers a diachronic reconstruction of MacCormick's theory of law and legal argumentation: In particular, two related points will be highlighted in which the difference between the perspective upheld in Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory and the later writings is particularly marked. The first point concerns MacCormick's gradual break with legal positivism, and more specifically the thesis that the implicit pretension to justice of law proves legal positivism false in all its different versions. The second point concerns MacCormick's acceptance (...) of the one-right-answer thesis and the consequent thinning of the differences between MacCormick's theory of legal reasoning and that of Ronald Dworkin and of Robert Alexy. The intent, however, is not only to describe this change in MacCormick's thought, but also to attempt a defence of the original view that we find in Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory. (shrink)

This is a title on the foundations of defeasible logic, which explores the formal properties of everyday reasoning patterns whereby people jump to conclusions, reserving the right to retract them in the light of further information. Although technical in nature the book contains sections that outline basic issues by means of intuitive and simple examples. This book is primarily targeted at philosophers interested in the foundations of defeasible logic, logicians, and specialists in artificial intelligence and theoretical computer science.

In this paper, we continue the study of the Łukasiewicz residuation algebras of order $n$ with Moisil possibility operators initiated by Figallo. More precisely, among other things, a method to determine the number of elements of the $MC_n$-algebra with a finite set of free generators is described. Applying this method, we find again the results obtained by Iturrioz and Monteiro and by Figallo for the case of Tarski algebras and $I\varDelta _{3}$-algebras, respectively.

Examining the work on dialogue done by Gadamer, Habermas and Derrida, this article shows the theoretical depth and complexity of this concept. Drawing together different views, its highlights the stakes of the competing understandings of this topic. The diversity in their individual conceptualisations of dialogue gives an insight into the wealth of conceptual resources that is hidden in this word. This piece reads selected pieces from these thinkers through the lens of the concept of dialogue — building and refining a (...) definition of what dialogue could mean. (shrink)

Caros leitores,Chegamos ao nosso número 28 e iniciamos o processo de internacionalização da revista. Neste primeiro momento, colocamos nosso título em grego e alguns detalhes em inglês. Progressivamente vamos tornar a revista internacional, em um processo a se realizar por volta de 2020, embora reservando uma sessão para artigos em língua lusófona.Na presente edição, apresentamos na capa foto de um fragmento dos Anais Reais da Quinta Dinastia Egípcia, em diorito, que se encontra hoje no Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, em (...) Londres.Convidamos os leitores para a nossa seleção de artigos, em nossa terceira edição do ano.Boas pesquisas a todos,Aldo Dinucci (Editor Responsável). (shrink)

In 2009, an influential and remarkable report to the French highest health authorities written by Claire Compagnon, a patients' advocate, and Véronique Ghadi, a legal scholar, has brought to public attention a phenomenon that had gone unnoticed in medical ethics: the report's authors called it "ordinary abuse".1 They argue that the term describes a widespread and invisible form of mistreatment in the hospital setting, which they distinguish from abuse proper, a phenomenon, they argue, which is far less common and controversial. (...) "Ordinary abuse," they write, occurs for example when patients have to accept "interminable and inexplicable... (shrink)

Euthydemus is included neither in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker by Diels–Kranz nor in Sofisti. Testimonianze e frammenti by Untersteiner nor in Early Greek Philosophy by Laks and Most. Likewise, the great twentieth century works on the Sophists do not give space to him, at best mentioning him briefly. Yet Euthydemus is the author of a fragment, which was quoted by Plato in his Cratylus, and on which again there is no modern study. This paper sets out to study this fragment (...) in depth, to review and discuss the various translations, both existing and possible, to study the context of Plato’s quotation, to clarify the exact meaning and the theoretical scope of this important fragment, and lastly to place Euthydemus in the Protagorean tradition, of which he is a notable product. (shrink)