Según Adorno, la teoría no supeditada a exigencias prácticas inmediatas refleja y reproduce una injusticia, a saber, la que acompaña a la división entre el trabajo manual y el trabajo intelectual, pero por otra parte es una fuente de autonomía en medio de la agudización en las sociedades del capitalismo industrial avanzado de la dominación de la naturaleza y el control administrativo de la vida. Con miras a evitar el uso clasificatorio del lenguaje y la consecuente infravaloración de lo particular (...) en nombre de la primacía de lo universal, Adorno opta por una escritura dialéctica congruente con su crítica a la reificación. (shrink)

In this work, attention is directed to dialectical writing as it was introduced by Hegel. This writing is interpreted as a source of demythologizing and resistance in the face of reification. The positivist concept of verifiable facts has molded the structure and workings of a world oriented towards..

Comment on Brogaard's Seeing and Saying (OUP 2018).

Targeted modifications of the human epigenome, epigenome editing (EE), are around the corner. For EE, techniques similar to genome editing (GE) techniques are used. While in GE the genetic information is changed by directly modifying DNA, intervening in the epigenome requires modifying the configuration of DNA, for example, how it is folded. This does not come with alterations in the base sequence (‘genetic code’). To date, there is almost no ethical debate about EE, whereas the discussions about GE are voluminous. (...) Our article introduces EE into bioethics by translating knowledge from science to ethics and by comparing the risks of EE with those of GE. We, first (I), make the case that a broader ethical debate on EE is due, provide scientific background on EE, compile potential use-cases and recap previous debates. We then (II) compare EE and GE and suggest that the severity of risks of novel gene technologies depends on three factors: (i) the choice of an ex vivo versus an in vivo editing approach, (ii) the time of intervention and intervention windows and (iii) the targeted diseases. Moreover, we show why germline EE is not effective and reject the position of strong epigenetic determinism. We conclude that EE is not always ethically preferable to GE in terms of risks, and end with suggestions for next steps in the current ethical debate on EE by briefly introducing ethical challenges of new areas of preventive applications of EE (III). (shrink)

In response to our critics, we clarify and defend key ideas in the report Open and Inclusive: Fair Processes for Financing Universal Health Coverage. First, we argue that procedural fairness has greater value than Dan Hausman allows. Second, we argue that the Report aligns with John Kinuthia’s view that a knowledgeable public and a capable civil society, alongside good facilitation, are important for effective public deliberation. Moreover, we agree with Kinuthia that the Report’s framework for procedural fairness applies not merely (...) within the health sector, but also to the wider budget process. Third, we argue that while Dheepa Rajan and Benjamin Rouffy-Ly are right that robust processes for equal participation are often central to a fair process, sometimes improvements in other aspects of procedural fairness, such as transparency, can take priority over strengthening participation. Fourth, while we welcome Sara Bennett and Maria Merritt’s fascinating use of the Report’s principles of procedural fairness to assess the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, we argue that their application of the Report’s principle of equality to development partners’ decision-making requires further justification. (shrink)

If I am confused, and I think two people are one and the same, that may impair my ability to refer to either of them. This is combinatory confusion. What if I am confused, and think that one person is actually two people? This is separatory confusion, and it seems quite different. After all, even in my confusion, my thoughts and my referential devices seem to track back to a single individual. Elmar Unnsteinsson has recently argued that both types of (...) confusion corrupt, i.e. they may prevent us from referring the right way. In this paper, I examine the four arguments he offers for this conclusion, and I argue that the intuitive view that separatory confusion does not corrupt can withstand his challenge. (shrink)

We summarize key messages from the World Bank report Open and Inclusive: Fair Processes for Financing Universal Health Coverage. A central lesson of the Report is that in decision-making on the path to UHC, procedural fairness matters alongside substantive fairness. Decision systems should be assessed using a complete conception of procedural fairness that embodies core commitments to impartial and equal consideration of interests and perspectives. These commitments demand that comprehensive information is gathered and disclosed and that justifications for policies are (...) publicly debated; that participation in decision-making is enabled; and that these characteristics of the decision system are institutionalised rather than up to the good will of decision-makers. Procedural fairness can improve equity in outcomes, raise legitimacy and trust, and can help make reforms last. While improving procedural fairness can be costly and there are barriers to achieving it, the range of instruments that countries at varying levels of income and institutional capacity have used with some success shows that, in many contexts, advances in procedural fairness in health financing are possible and worthwhile. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of a 'standard of care' as it has been used in recent arguments over the ethics of international human-subjects research. It argues that this concept is ambiguous along two different axes, with the result that there are at least four possible standard of care arguments that have not always been clearly distinguished. As a result, it has been difficult to assess the implications of opposing standard of care arguments, to recognize important differences in their supporting (...) rationales, and even to locate the crux of the disagreement in some instances. The goal of the present discussion, therefore, is to disambiguate the concept of a 'standard of care' and to highlight the areas of genuine disagreement among different standards. In the end it is argued that one standard of care argument in particular is more complex than either its proponents or its critics may have recognized and that understanding this possibility opens up a potentially promising avenue of inquiry that remains to be carefully explored. (shrink)

This paper provides new examples of vagueness phenomena with comparatives. I show that comparatives of the form ‘x is ADJ-er than y’ can be vague due to a fuzziness in how much of some property makes for a difference in ADJ-ness. The sorites examples I provide cannot be assimilated to cases of indiscriminability or fuzziness in relevant dimensions, standards, or measurement procedures. A revised degree-based semantics with semiorders, a well studied threshold structure, is developed. The treatment of equatives captures the (...) truth of the claim that adjacent items in the sorites series are not relevantly distinguishable in ADJ-ness; and it avoids validating transitivities that would yield paradoxical conclusions. (shrink)

Slightly modified excerpt from the section 13.4 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick (translated into englisch): This chapter is based on an analysis of ethical debates on epigenetics and genome editing, debates, in which ethical arguments relating to future generations and justice play a central role. The analysis aims to contextualize new developments in genetic engineering, such as genome and epigenome editing, ethically. At the beginning, the assumptions of "genetic determinism," on which "genetic essentialism" is based, of "epigenetic determinism" as well as "genetic" (...) and "epigenetic exceptionalism" are analyzed and critically discussed. The remarks on the ethical discourse on epigenetics show that the notion of "epigenetic determinism" can sometimes be discerned not only in popular scientific discourse but also in ethical discourse. Ethical debates on epigenetics, however, have distanced themselves from this deterministic understanding. As a result, the focus in the ethical discourse on epigenetics shifts from responsibility for one's own health and that of subsequent generations to justice. What is meant here is justice, for example, in terms of access to healthy environmental conditions, regardless of whether these contribute to health with or without epigenetic agency. An analysis of the discourse on genome editing reveals that it is primarily germline interventions that are being ethically examined, with a concentration on the aspect of inheritance. The question is whether this is accompanied by an implicit "genetic determinism" or even a "genetic essentialism": the determinism could lie in the centrality of the aspect of heritability, since only genetic information is inherited. Does the aspect of heritability and genome modification play a more decisive role in debates on genome editing than the safety issue? Is the problem of embryos and their potential offspring not being able to consent to germline intervention given such a high priority because it is a genetic intervention? Under such a premise of "strong genetic determinism" supplemented by "epigenetic determinism," not only genome editing but also epigenome editing would be ethically relevant precisely because it too would have an influence on the genome. How this influence of genome editing and epigenome editing is ethically evaluated in each case therefore depends initially on whether the assumptions of "genetic" and "epigenetic determinism" are advocated. These assumptions are increasingly viewed critically in ethical discourse because they cannot be confirmed from a scientific perspective. In popular scientific debates in particular, however, they seem to persist, which ultimately also influences the public discussion. Since a broad public discussion is required especially on genome editing, a reflective approach to the various "-isms" analyzed in this chapter is central. DOI: 10.5771/9783748927242. (shrink)

The emergence of a new tissue economy raises issues for the governance of risk and concepts of the body and self. This article explores the development of autologous cell therapies as a form of tissue engineering and considers how and why autologous applications are seen as less risky and more socially and politically acceptable. In a careful analysis of contemporary debates around the need for new international policies to regulate these technologies, we critically assess the discursive strategies employed to support (...) ideas of the body as a natural entity. Central to these debates are assumptions that autologous applications do not threaten the moral or corporeal integrity of the individual and that they are ‘an ethics-free zone’. Analysis reveals that concepts such as intercorporeality need to be refined if they are to assist our understanding of these cell-based therapies. We consider the biopolitics of Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation (ACI) in order to show the linkages between the culturing of cells, regulation and the reproduction of the self. (shrink)

What role does non-genetic inheritance play in evolution? In recent work we have independently and collectively argued that the existence and scope of non-genetic inheritance systems, including epigenetic inheritance, niche construction/ecological inheritance, and cultural inheritance—alongside certain other theory revisions—necessitates an extension to the neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis (MS) in the form of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). However, this argument has been challenged on the grounds that non-genetic inheritance systems are exclusively proximate mechanisms that serve the ultimate function of calibrating organisms (...) to stochastic environments. In this paper we defend our claims, pointing out that critics of the EES (1) conflate non-genetic inheritance with early 20th-century notions of soft inheritance; (2) misunderstand the nature of the EES in relation to the MS; (3) confuse individual phenotypic plasticity with trans-generational non-genetic inheritance; (4) fail to address the extensive theoretical and empirical literature which shows that non-genetic inheritance can generate novel targets for selection, create new genetic equilibria that would not exist in the absence of non-genetic inheritance, and generate phenotypic variation that is independent of genetic variation; (5) artificially limit ultimate explanations for traits to gene-based selection, which is unsatisfactory for phenotypic traits that originate and spread via non-genetic inheritance systems; and (6) fail to provide an explanation for biological organization. We conclude by noting ways in which we feel that an overly gene-centric theory of evolution is hindering progress in biology and other sciences. (shrink)

The “fair benefits” approach to international research is designed to produce results that all can agree are fair without taking a stand on divisive questions of justice. But its appealing veneer of collaboration masks ambiguities at both a conceptual and an operational level. An attempt to put it into practice would look a lot like an auction, leaving little reason to think the outcomes will satisfy even minimal conditions of fairness.

To judge from the rash of recent law review articles, it is a miracle that research with human subjects in the U.S. continues to draw breath under the asphyxiating heel of the rent-seeking, creativity-stifling, jack-booted bureaucrethics that is the current system of research ethics oversight and review. Institutional Review Boards, sometimes called Research Ethics Committees, have been accused of perpetrating “probably the most widespread violation of the First Amendment in our nation's history,” resulting in a “disaster, not only for academics, (...) but for the whole nation.” One member of the President's Council on Bioethics went so far as to assert, “There has been no greater damage to academic freedom in the United States in my lifetime. And my lifetime encompasses McCarthy and it encompasses political correctness, both.” Locked in the bureaucratic “iron cage” of IRB oversight, critics charge that researchers have been transformed into a vulnerable, exposed population, subject to domination, that has been likened in one case to a kind of “Tuskegee in reverse.”. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of equipoise in evaluating international research. It distinguishes two possible formulations of the equipoise requirement that license very different evaluations of international research proposals. The interpretation that adopts a narrow criterion of similarity between clinical contexts has played an important role in one recent controversy, but it suffers from a number of problems. An alternative interpretation that adopts a broader criterion of similarity does a better job of avoiding both exploitation of the brute fact of (...) social deprivation and the exploitation of needy populations for the benefit of more well-off populations. It also holds out the promise of reconciling the need to find interventions that can be employed in developing world contexts with the cluster of moral values that must constrain the way such research is carried out. (shrink)

To give substance to the rhetoric of ‘learning health systems’, a variety of novel trial designs are being explored to more seamlessly integrate research with medical practice, reduce study duration and reduce the number of participants allocated to ineffective interventions. Many of these designs rely on response adaptive randomisation. However, critics charge that RAR is unethical on the grounds that it violates the principle of equipoise. In this paper, I reconstruct critiques of RAR as holding that it is inconsistent with (...) five important ethical principles. I then argue that these criticisms rest on a faulty view of equipoise encouraged by the idea that a RAR study models the beliefs of a single rational agent about the relative merits of the interventions being studied. I outline a view in which RAR models an idealised health system in which diverse communities of fully informed experts shrink or grow as their constituent members update their expert opinions in light of reliable medical evidence. I show how a proper understanding of clinical equipoise can reconcile this conception of RAR with these five ethical principles. This analysis removes an in-principle objection to RAR and sheds important light on the relationship between clinical equipoise and transient diversity in the scientific community. (shrink)

An account of Aristotle's syllogistic (including a full square of opposition and allowing for empty nouns) as an integral part of first-order predicate logic is lacking. Some say it is not possible. It is not found in the tradition stemming from ukasiewicz's attempt nor in less formal approaches such as Strawson's. The ukasiewicz tradition leaves Aristotle's syllogistic as an autonomous axiomatized system. In this paper Aristotle's syllogistic is presented within first-order predicate logic with special restricted quantifiers. The theory is not (...) motivated primarily by historical considerations but as an accurate account of categorical sentences along lines suggested by recent work on natural language quantifiers and themes from supposition theory. It provides logical forms which conform to grammatical ones and is intended as a rival to accounts of quantifiers in natural language that appeal to binary quantifiers, for example, Wiggins or to restricted quantifiers, for example, Neale. (shrink)

I argue that we should rethink the nature and scope of Spinoza’s “one and the same” relation. Contrary to the standard reading, the nature of this relation is not identity but a union, and its scope includes all idea-object pairs, even God and the idea of God. A crucial reason we should adopt this dual picture is that the idea of God must be one and the same as something found when Nature is conceived under each of the other attributes. (...) If “one and the same” is interpreted as a relation of identity, this requirement cannot be met. However, maintaining that God and the idea of God are one and the same not only fulfills this requirement, but also is independently motivated. I also briefly consider how the thesis that God and the idea of God are one and the same affords us with positive insights concerning the nature of this relation. (shrink)

We present a plural logic that is as expressively strong as it can be without sacrificing axiomatisability, axiomatise it, and use it to chart the expressive limits set by axiomatisability. To the standard apparatus of quantification using singular variables our object-language adds plural variables, a predicate expressing inclusion (is/are/is one of/are among), and a plural definite description operator. Axiomatisability demands that plural variables only occur free, but they have a surprisingly important role. Plural description is not eliminable in favour of (...) quantification; on the contrary, quantification is definable in terms of it. Predicates and functors (function signs) can take plural as well as singular terms as arguments, and both many-valued and single-valued functions are expressible. The system accommodates collective as well as distributive predicates, and the condition for a predicate to be distributive is definable within it; similarly for functors. An essential part of the project is to demonstrate the soundness and completeness of the calculus with respect to a semantics that does without set-theoretic domains and in which the use of settheoretic extensions of predicates and functors is replaced by the sui generis relations and functions for which the extensions were at best artificial surrogates. Our metalanguage is designed to solve the difficulties involved in talking plurally about individuals and about the semantic values of plural items. (shrink)

Speciesism, broadly understood as the view that species membership is a morally relevant property, has been a central topic of debate within animal ethics for around 50 years. However, in all this time, animal ethicists have paid relatively scant attention to the nature of species membership itself. This seems potentially regrettable, since species membership's precise nature is presumably highly pertinent to the question of its exact moral relevance. Here, I advocate for a ‘species-focused’ approach to assessing speciesism, arguing that, in (...) debating the merits of speciesism, animal ethicists should (i) centre the nature of species membership, and (ii) consult philosophers of biology. Adherence to this second prescription appears necessary since a lot of what philosophers of biology believe regarding the nature of species membership appears contrary to what many animal ethicists have seemingly assumed. (shrink)

I argue that Scanlon's Value of Choice View does not offer a plausible account of substantive responsibility. I offer a new account, which I call the Potential Value of Opportunities View. On this view, when a person is in a position to freely and capably make an informed choice, we assess her situation not by the outcome she achieves but by the potential value of her opportunities. This value depends on the value of the various things that she can achieve (...) through her choices, as well as on how disposed she is to choose her better options and avoid her worse options. This view explains the priority we give to preventing harm that a person cannot avoid by choosing appropriately over harm that a person can so avoid by the fact that the second person has a valuable opportunity that the first does not have. It explains the importance of protecting people against choosing badly by the value of being placed in circumstances in which one is disposed to choose well, and the disvalue of being exposed to the danger of coming to harm by choosing badly. (shrink)

The theses supported in this essay are that the world is to some extent constructed by each of us, that it can and ought to be constructed in a more benign way, that such construction will require more trust than most people are currently willing to grant, and that most of us will be better off if most of us can manage to be more trusting in spite of our doubts.

1 In 1954 Karl Popper published an article attempting to show that the identification of the quantitative concept degree of confirmation with the quantitative concept degree of probability is a serious error. The error was presumably committed by J. M. Keynes, H. Reichen bach and R. Carnap. 2 It was Popper's intention then, to expose the error and to introduce an explicatum for the prescientific concept of degree of confirmation. A few months later Y. Bar-Hillel published an article attempting to (...) show that no serious error had been committed (particularly by Carnap) and that the problem introduced by Popper was simply a "verbal one. "3 Popper replied immediately that "Dr. Bar-Hillel forces me [Popper] now to criticize Carnap's theory further," and he [Popper] introduced further objections which, if accepted, destroy Carnap's theory. 4 About eight years after this exchange took place I was in graduate school at the University of Chicago in search of a topic for a doctoral dissertation. An investigation of the issues involved in this exchange seemed to be ideal for me because I had (and still have) a great ad miration for the work of both Carnap and Popper. A thoroughly revised and I hope improved account of that investigation appears in the first five chapters of this book. Put very briefly, what I found were four main points of contention. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 32-34.

Este artigo tem como objetivo avaliar em que medida as considerações feitas por Gilbert Simondon sobre a natureza dos _objetos técnicos_ fundamentam teses incompatíveis com a prática da _obsolescência programada_. Mais precisamente, interessa saber como o conceito de _concretização_, que está relacionado a aspectos ontológicos de tais objetos, possui implicações éticas contra o descarte de objetos produzidos pelo mundo contemporâneo industrializado. No contexto industrial capitalista, a obsolescência programada tem sido usada no sentido de uma manutenção econômica. Contudo, há vários problemas (...) resultantes dessa prática. Um deles diz respeito aos impactos destrutivos causados ao meio ambiente. Assim, haveria na proposta de Simondon elementos para encontrar respostas aos problemas causados pela obsolescência programada? Defendemos que uma saída para isso está na própria orientação ética inerente ao desenvolvimento adequado dos objetos técnicos, constituído na perspectiva da concretização de tais objetos. (shrink)

O objetivo desse artigo é apresentar as vias de pesquisa da filosofia de Machado de Assis. Parte-se da perspectiva não colonial para analisar o dilema da crítica literária a respeito da presença da filosofia na obra de Machado de Assis. Os argumentos da crítica justificam-se pela retórica da modernidade e pela lógica da colonialidade. Sob três critérios interpretativos distintos – o racial, o geográfico e o ideológico – mantém-se o mesmo dilema: como tornar filósofo aquele que não pode ser filósofo? (...) Novas vias de interpretação da obra de Machado de Assis podem solucionar esse dilema ao indicarem temas e métodos de pesquisa não coloniais sobre a relação entre a filosofia e a vida intelectual do autor. (shrink)

Stuart Rachels and Larry Temkin have offered a purported counterexample to the acyclicity of the relationship “all things considered better than”. This example invokes our intuitive preferences over pairs of alternatives involving a single person’s painful experiences of varying intensity and duration. These preferences, Rachels and Temkin claim, are confidently held, entirely reasonable, and cyclical. They conclude that we should drop acyclicity as a requirement of rationality. I argue that, together with the findings of recent research on the way people (...) evaluate episodes of pain, the use of a heuristic known as similarity-based decision-making explains why our intuitive preferences may violate acyclicity in this example. I argue that this explanation should lead us to regard these preferences with suspicion, because it indicates that they may be the result of one or more biases. I conclude that Rachels’ and Temkin’s example does not provide sufficient grounds for rejecting acyclicity. (shrink)

This book examines the development and fundamental nature of legal pluralism. Legal pluralism evokes two distinctions: 'state' vs 'non-state' law; and 'law' vs 'non-law'. As such, although this book focuses upon circumstances where two or more legal orders compete to govern the same social space, it also addresses the nature of law in general. Drawing on material conflicts arising within jurisdictions such as Australia, Burundi, Cameroon, Gambia, the United States, and Zambia, this book explores the conceptual, moral, and political challenges (...) that legal pluralism creates. Emphasising that non-state law carries no less dignity than that often ascribed to the legal orders of contemporary states, it advances a theoretically sophisticated argument in favour of recognising and respecting genuine cases of legal pluralism, wherever they arise. Accessible and thought provoking, this book will appeal to legal scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, and political and social philosophers as well as practising lawyers, judges, and policy makers who deal with issues of legal pluralism. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza cómo los modelos de producción y de consumo de los años veinte determinaron la obsesión cultural por la autenticidad. A partir de los análisis que hicieron Benjamin, Adorno y Kracauer se analiza el modo en que la industria cultural favorece la identificación estética con las estrellas de la conocida como sociedad de masas. A continuación, se explica por qué el origen de esta realidad hay que buscarlo en el proyecto literario y político de Rousseau y en el (...) modo en que éste, al mismo tiempo que rehabilita la novela en la institución literaria, asocia virtud moral y pasión natural. (shrink)

Should we embrace nihilism, as Nolen Gertz suggests, or try to overcome it? For Nietzsche, nihilism must be overcome – if we're strong enough. The key, argues Alex Silk, is to see how nihilistic beliefs – that, say, nothing matters – derive from nihilistic feelings and bodily states. Understanding the basic features of human nature and experience at the root of nihilism paves the way toward a healthier, affirming perspective on ourselves and human life. Nietzsche’s rhetorical style helps us (...) incorporate such a perspective by engaging our feelings as well as our rational faculties. (shrink)

Philippe van Parijs (2003) has argued that an egalitarian ethos cannot be part of a post- Political Liberalism Rawlsian view of justice, because the demands of political justice are confined to principles for institutions of the basic structure alone. This paper argues, by contrast, that certain principles for individual conduct—including a principle requiring relatively advantaged individuals to sometimes make their economic choices with the aim of maximising the prospects of the least advantaged—are an integral part of a Rawlsian political conception (...) of justice. It concludes that incentive payments will have a clearly limited role in a Rawlsian theory of justice. (shrink)

This paper provides an introductory discussion of questions about three moral duties in the context of global poverty: the duty to aid; the duty not to harm; and the duty to promote just global institutions.

Perception of (and during) events is a necessary feature of any perceptual theory. Norman's dual-process approach cannot account for the perception of events without substantial interactions between the dorsal and ventral systems. These interactions, as outlined by Norman, are highly problematical. The necessity for interactions between the two systems makes the distinction useless.