Dans l'horizon de l’étude de la philosophie naturelle d'Averroès, le nouveau travail de Ruth Glasner intitulé Averroes’ Physics: a Turning Point in Medieval Natural Philosophy occupera assurément une place de premier plan. Dans cet ouvrage, RG propose une étude analytique des trois commentaires d'Averroès à la Physique d'Aristote – l’ Abrégé, le Commentaire Moyen et le Grand Commentaire. La force incontestable de son travail réside tout d'abord dans son approche double du texte d'Averroès, à la fois philologique et théorique. Tout (...) au long de son analyse, ces deux aspects restent intimement liés et la mobilisation des instruments philologiques n'est jamais une fin en soi. Cette analyse a en effet pour but ultime de reconstruire le système du monde tel qu'Averroès le concevait. L'enjeu fondamental de cette étude est alors de supplanter la vision d'un Averroès interprète servile de la physique aristotélicienne et de présenter sa conception de la nature comme un système cohérent, organique et original. (shrink)

This book is the first study of Aristotle s theory of generation and its revival by Averroes. For the first time, major treatises by Averroes on the physics, theory of elements, and biology of Aristotle are considered in their mutual relationship and in their connection to metaphysics. This study reveals issues at the foundation of Averroes philosophy and reinterprets them as fundamental milestones in the history of philosophy.".

The present paper aims at presenting Averroes’ doctrine of act and potency in the framework of his general conception of metaphysics as a science. By tracing the origins of his doctrine back to Alexander of Aphrodisias, it shows that Averroes conceives act and potency as concomitant attributes of being qua being and as terms πρὸς ἕν and ἀφ’ ἑνός. According to this reading, the study of these two notions, considered as such, constitutes an essential step in Averroes’ metaphysical project, whose (...) ultimate goal is to account for the essence of the first of all forms: God. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the biological phenomenon of female sexual pleasure and aims at determining its causal role in Aristotle’s biological doctrine. In considering several passages of the De Generatione Animalium, the author suggests that female sexual pleasure is one of the phenomena that Aristotle defines as “for what is better”. The study of this phenomenon provides the opportunity to rethink the place of the final cause in Aristotle’s causal system and the nature of the so-called “derivative” teleology. In (...) the second part of the study, the author provides an overview of the Greco-Arabic reception of Aristotle’s doctrine. The study of the debate prompted by Averroes against Galen in the xiith century AD shows the importance of the issue of female sexual pleasure in the Greco-Arabic peripatetism and clarifies in turn the doctrine of the Stagyrite. (shrink)

English summary: The relationship between physics and metaphysics is one of the core questions at the heart of Aristotelian philosophy. The collected studies in this volume explore the epistemological connections between these two sciences, and especially certain essential points raised in Greek and Arabic history concerning this debate. French description: La question de savoir quel type de rapport entretiennent la physique et la metaphysique est au coeur du systeme philosophique d'Aristote. Ce rapport, toutefois, n'est pas facile a saisir, non seulement (...) parce qu'Aristote ne l'a jamais defini de facon claire, mais parce qu'il est delicat d'en comprendre la nature a la lumiere de la theorie de la science exposee dans les Seconds Analytiques. En effet, Aristote affirme d'une part que la metaphysique, concue comme science universelle, n'a pas de genre-sujet propre, et d'autre part que la physique, quoique seconde par rapport a la metaphysique, en assure le fondement. C'est de ce rapport ambivalent que decoule le plus grand nombre d'apories liees au statut epistemologique de chacune des deux sciences comme a la nature de leur rapport. Les contributions reunies dans ce recueil s'inscrivent dans ce contexte theorique complexe. Elles portent moins sur la difficulte de comprendre le critere ou les criteres d'organisation des traites qu'on appelle Metaphysique et Physique que sur celle de presenter et de justifier l'entrelacement epistemologique de ces deux sciences, concues comme deux disciplines unitaires mais plurielles. Sans pretendre reconstruire l'histoire de la question, l'un des enjeux de ce volume fut aussi de degager, passe le texte meme d'Aristote, certains points nodaux de l'histoire grecque et arabe du debat. (shrink)

In this paper we prove strong completeness of axiomatic extensions of first-order strict core fuzzy logics with the so-called quasi-witnessed axioms with respect to quasi-witnessed models. As a consequence we obtain strong completeness of Product Predicate Logic with respect to quasi-witnessed models, already proven by M.C. Laskowski and S. Malekpour in [19]. Finally we study similar problems for expansions with Δ, define Δ-quasi-witnessed axioms and prove that any axiomatic extension of a first-order strict core fuzzy logic, expanded with Δ, and (...) Δ-quasi-witnessed axioms are complete with respect to Δ-quasi-witnessed models. (shrink)

RésuméLe présent article tâche de reconstruire l'interprétation que Thomas propose du processus cognitif décrit au début de la Physique d'Aristote, ainsi que sa critique de l'interprétation proposée par Averroès de ce même texte. Il présente dans ce but les exégèses des commentateurs grecs de l'antiquité tardive qui ont ouvert le débat sur la question; il reconstruit, ensuite, la doctrine de Thomas à l'aide d'autres textes de son corpus, ainsi que sa critique de l'exégèse attribuée à Averroès; il restitue enfin l'interprétation (...) que ce dernier expose dans son Grand Commentaire à Phys. I, 1, dans le but de montrer que les critiques que Thomas lui adresse découlent, au moins en partie, d'une mauvaise interprétation de la divisio textus qu'Averroès offre de Phys. I, 1. Il suggère aussi que sur certains points essentiels l'exégèse de Thomas ne s'écarte pas de la lecture proposée par Averroès. (shrink)

Le but de cet article est d’analyser l’interprétation qu’Averroès propose de l’étude de la génération spontanée développée par Aristote dans le chapitre 9du livre Z de la Métaphysique et montrer que pour Averroès le véritable enjeu de cette étude est celui de démontrer que l’agent et le produit de la génération ontune même forme. C’est cette thèse, en effet, qui d’après le Cordouan permet en dernière instance d’instaurer entre le monde céleste et le monde terrestre unecausalité, pour ainsi dire, «perpendiculaire» (...) qui sauve à la fois l’efficacité des causes secondes et celle de la cause première qui agit par l’intermédiaire descauses célestes. Ce nouveau cadre cosmologico-ontologique apparaît manifestement comme le produit d’une stratégie menée directement contre Avicenne, carle but ultime d’Averroès est de substituer sa propre théorie de l’Artisan divin à la théorie platonicienne de la création démiurgique, à laquelle il assimile la théorieavicennienne d’une donation des formes par une Intelligence cosmique. (shrink)

Certain steroids can react with proteins to form stable, covalent addition products. 16α‐hydroxyestrone and the glucocorticoids, for example, contain ketol moieties which permit them to react non‐enzymatically with proteins by forming Schiffbase rearrangement products with lysine residues. The oral contraceptive agent, 17α‐ethinylestradiol, can add to proteins after being enzymatically activated by microsomal oxidation. Elevated plasma levels of these steroids result in an increased amount of protein modification in vivo. Recent investigations have linked the occurrence of steroid‐modified proteins with pathological sequelae (...) associated with high steroid levels. (shrink)

Why government outsourcing of public powers is making us less free Many governmental functions today—from the management of prisons and welfare offices to warfare and financial regulation—are outsourced to private entities. Education and health care are funded in part through private philanthropy rather than taxation. Can a privatized government rule legitimately? The Privatized State argues that it cannot. In this boldly provocative book, Chiara Cordelli argues that privatization constitutes a regression to a precivil condition—what philosophers centuries ago called "a (...) state of nature." Developing a compelling case for the democratic state and its administrative apparatus, she shows how privatization reproduces the very same defects that Enlightenment thinkers attributed to the precivil condition, and which only properly constituted political institutions can overcome—defects such as provisional justice, undue dependence, and unfreedom. Cordelli advocates for constitutional limits on privatization and a more democratic system of public administration, and lays out the central responsibilities of private actors in contexts where governance is already extensively privatized. Charting a way forward, she presents a new conceptual account of political representation and novel philosophical theories of democratic authority and legitimate lawmaking. The Privatized State shows how privatization undermines the very reason political institutions exist in the first place, and advocates for a new way of administering public affairs that is more democratic and just. (shrink)

Le Quaestiones 2 («Se l’oggetto adeguato della conoscenza divina sia l’essenza di Dio o l’ente universale») e 3 («Se le creature secondo le loro proprie nature e le loro essenze siano vita in Dio e nel Verbo») della Distinctio 35 dello Scriptum di Pietro Aureoli sono importanti per la ricostruzione sia del pensiero del loro autore che della storia della dottrina delle idee divine nel Medioevo. Aureoli rifiuta il modello tradizionale di causalità esemplare, secondo cui Dio avrebbe creato il mondo (...) sulla base di modelli archetipi esistenti dall’eternità nella sua mente. Ricorrendo al concetto di aequivocatio, stabilisce che l’essenza di Dio è in maniera equivoca l’unico esemplare per tutte le creature ed elabora, così, la teoria della causalità esemplare equivoca. (shrink)

Drawing on philosophy, law and political science, and on a wealth of practical experience delivering emergency medical services in conflict-ridden settings, Lepora and Goodin untangle the complexities surrounding compromise and complicity.

In this book, originally published in 2007, Chiara Bottici argues for a philosophical understanding of political myth. Bottici demonstrates that myth is a process, one of continuous work on a basic narrative pattern that responds to a need for significance. Human beings need meaning in order to master the world they live in, but they also need significance in order to live in a world that is less indifferent to them. This is particularly true in the realm of politics. (...) Political myths are narratives through which we orient ourselves, and act and feel about our political world. Bottici shows that in order to come to terms with contemporary phenomena, such as the clash between civilizations, we need a Copernican revolution in political philosophy. If we want to save reason, we need to look at it from the standpoint of myth. (shrink)

What are the most detailed descriptions under which subjects intend to perform bodily actions? According to Pacherie (2006), these descriptions may be found by looking into motor representations—action representations in the brain that determine the movements to be performed. Specifically, for any motor representation guiding an action, its subject has an M‐intention representing that action in as much detail. I show that some M‐intentions breach the constraints that intentions should meet. I then identify a set of intentions—motor intentions—that represent actions (...) in as much detail as some motor representations while meeting the constraints that intentions should meet. (shrink)

After initially emerging in China, the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has advanced rapidly. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently declared it a pandemic, with Europe becoming its new epicentre. Italy has so far been the most severely hit European country and demand for critical care in the northern region currently exceeds its supply. This raises significant ethical concerns, among which is the allocation of scarce resources. Professionals are considering the prioritisation of patients most likely to survive over those with remote (...) chances, and this news has triggered an intense debate about the right of every individual to access healthcare. The proposed analysis suggests that the national emergency framework in which prioritisation criteria are currently enforced should not lead us to perceive scarce resources allocation as something new. From an ethical perspective, the novelty of the current emergency is not grounded in the devastating effects of scarce resources allocation, which is rife in recent and present clinical practice. Rather, it has to do with the extraordinarily high number of people who find themselves personally affected by the implications of scarce resources allocation and who suddenly realise that the principle of ‘equals should be treated equally’ may no longer be applicable. Along with the need to allocate appropriate additional financial resources to support the healthcare system, and thus to mitigate the scarcity of resources, the analysis insists on the relevance of a medical ethics perspective that does not place the burden of care and choice solely on physicians. (shrink)

Between the radical, creative capacity of our imagination and the social imaginary we are immersed in is an intermediate space philosophers have termed the imaginal, populated by images or (re)presentations that are presences in themselves. Offering a new, systematic understanding of the imaginal and its nexus with the political, Chiara Bottici brings fresh perspective to the formation of political and power relationships and the paradox of a world rich in imagery yet seemingly devoid of imagination. Bottici begins by defining (...) the difference between the imaginal and the imaginary, locating the imaginal's root meaning in the image and its ability to both characterize a public and establish a set of activities within that public. She identifies the imaginal's critical role in powering representative democracies and its amplification through globalization. She then addresses the troublesome increase in images now mediating politics and the transformation of politics into empty spectacle. The spectacularization of politics has led to its virtualization, Bottici observes, transforming images into processes with an uncertain relationship to reality, and, while new media has democratized the image in a global society of the spectacle, the cloned image no longer mediates politics but does the act for us. Bottici concludes with politics' current search for legitimacy through an invented ideal of tradition, a turn to religion, and the incorporation of human rights language. (shrink)

Clinical Ethics Committees (CECs), as distinct from Research Ethics Committees, were originally established with the aim of supporting healthcare professionals in managing controversial clinical ethical issues. However, it is still unclear whether they manage to accomplish this task and what is their impact on clinical practice. This systematic review aims to collect available assessments of CECs’ performance as reported in literature, in order to evaluate CECs’ effectiveness. We retrieved all literature published up to November 2019 in six databases (PubMed, Ovid (...) MEDLINE, Scopus, Philosopher’s Index, Embase and Web of Science), following PRISMA guidelines. We included only articles specifically addressing CECs and providing any form of CECs performance assessment. Twenty-nine articles were included. Ethics consultation was the most evaluated of CECs’ functions. We did not find standardized tools for measuring CECs’ efficacy, but 33% of studies considered “user satisfaction” as an indicator, with 94% of them reporting an average positive perception of CECs’ impact. Changes in patient treatment and a decrease of moral distress in health personnel were reported as additional outcomes of ethics consultation. The highly diverse ways by which CECs carry out their activities make CECs’ evaluation difficult. The adoption of shared criteria would be desirable to provide a reliable answer to the question about their effectiveness. Nonetheless, in general both users and providers consider CECs as helpful, relevant to their work, able to improve the quality of care. Their main function is ethics consultation, while less attention seems to be devoted to bioethics education and policy formation. (shrink)

The article examines the ethics of musical interpretation, focusing on the performer’s responsibility in faithfully recreating a work from the score. Drawing inspiration from conductor Daniel Barenboim’s reflections (2016), it analyzes the delicate balance between personal expression and fidelity to the work, highlighting how interpretation involves not only technical skill but also moral responsibility. This notion develops through the importance attributed to history, authenticity, and the present in interpretation. These concepts are explored in the relationship between the score and the (...) performer, addressing the ethical challenges involved in balancing fidelity and creativity. The study of Historically Informed Performance (HIP) demonstrates how it serves as the foundation of the ethics of musical interpretation, due to its attempt to recreate the original conditions of performances. However, it is also noted that HIP embodies an overly rigid fidelity, thus requiring a more balanced approach that views musical practice as an ongoing dialogue between past and present. Finally, since the rules of musical practice are not enough for performers to interpret ethically, as they need to be internalized, the role of Aristotelian phronesis is explored as an internal guide for performers in interpretative practice. Phronesis aids the performer in mediating between past and present and in making interpretative decisions that are both ethically and musically appropriate. (shrink)

Chiara Caporuscio and Adrian Kind argue that psychedelic-assisted therapy is different from traditional therapy in an ethically fraught way and, as a result, arguably require ethical guidelines beyond those constitutive of traditional therapy. The way in question pertains to the therapist’s role as participatory sense-maker of the patient’s experiences and, with it, the balance of power between the therapist and the patient. In both traditional and psychedelic-assisted therapy, the therapist role as sense-maker can give rise to an imbalance of (...) power between the therapist and the patient, such as when the therapist’s attempt at sense-making totally disregards the patient’s attempt at doing so. But in psychedelic-assisted therapy, the possibility of such a power imbalance is exacerbated. For, given her use of a psychedelic drug, the patient’s conscious experience is altered in such a way as to render her much more vulnerable than she otherwise would be. To give just one example, since the therapist is perceived by the patient to be an authoritative sense-making guide, the former’s attempts at making sense of the latter’s experiences can have much more influence on a psychedelically intoxicated patient’s interpretation of her experiences than they otherwise would have. Hence, Caporuscio and Kind’s conclusion that the ethical guidelines constitutive of traditional therapy are probably not sufficient for psychedelic-assisted therapy. (shrink)

Medical complicity in torture is prohibited by international law and codes of professional ethics. But in the many countries in which torture is common, doctors frequently are expected to assist unethical acts that they are unable to prevent. Sometimes these doctors face a dilemma: they are asked to provide diagnoses or treatments that respond to genuine health needs but that also make further torture more likely or more effective. The duty to avoid complicity in torture then comes into conflict with (...) the doctor’s duty to care for patients. Sometimes the right thing for a doctor to do requires complicity in torture. Whether this is the case depends on: the expected consequences of the doctor’s actions; the wishes of the patient; and the extent of the doctor’s complicity with wrongdoing. Medical associations can support physicians who face this dilemma while maintaining a commitment to clear principles denouncing torture. (shrink)

We develop an account of how mutually inconsistent models of the same target system can provide coherent information about the system. Our account makes use of ideas from the debate surrounding rob...

Chris Letheby’s defence of psychedelic therapy hinges on the premise that psychedelic-facilitated insights about the self are in a better epistemic position than those about the external world. In this commentary, I argue that such a claim is not sufficiently defended. More precisely, I argue that one element is underexplored in Letheby’s otherwise compelling picture: namely, that unlike new beliefs about the external world, beliefs about oneself have the capacity to turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. Recognising the psychedelic experience and the (...) subsequent integration process as opportunities not only to apprehend certain facts about the self but also to actively shape and redetermine those facts is key to understanding the epistemic differences between insights patients have about themselves and about the external world. (shrink)

In the philosophy of science and epistemology literature, robustness analysis has become an umbrella term that refers to a variety of strategies. One of the main purposes of this paper is to argue that different strategies rely on different criteria for justifications. More specifically, I will claim that: i) robustness analysis differs from de-idealization even though the two concepts have often been conflated in the literature; ii) the comparison of different model frameworks requires different justifications than the comparison of models (...) that differ only for the assumption under test; iii) the replacement of specific assumptions with different ones can encounter specific difficulties in scientific practice. These claims will be supported by a case study in population ecology and a case study in geographical economics. (shrink)

Compromise arises in contexts where irreconcilable claims must nonetheless somehow be resolved. Ordinary people in everyday life, politicians and artists, doctors engaging in research, humanitarian workers providing aid in the midst of war – all of them will have faced situations where compromise appeared to be the only reasonable option, and yet will have felt that there was nevertheless something deeply wrong with it. The aim of this paper is to help make sense of that sentiment. The focus of this (...) paper will be on some aspects of the morality of compromise. Its lynchpin will be to construe compromise as a joint action, in particular, a joint wrongdoing – taking part in, and sharing responsibility for, the doing of things that are wrong from the point of view of those who are the parties to the compromise. The question of ‘what is wrong with compromise?’ is thus recast as a question of ‘what is my part in the wrongs being done as part of the compromise?’ It is tempting to suppose that a compromise serves to dilute personal responsibility, parsing it out among parties to the compromise. Viewing a compromise as a joint action, in contrast, will help us to see how a compromise actually increases responsibility among parties to it. They are now jointly collaborating in some action that each of them sees as wrong, at least in part (albeit in differing parts). Discussions of compromise traditionally prioritize the inter-personal aspect – compromise, in the transitive form of ‘compromising with’ someone. But I argue that the intransitive form – ‘compromise of’ – deserves pride of place. The reason for prioritizing the intransitive ‘compromise of’ is simple: that is what is involved in the intra-personal calculation that must, of necessity, go on inside one's own head in the process of deciding whether or not to agree to a 'compromise with' someone else. In this paper I shall concentrate specifically on compromises of principles, or (more precisely) on ‘matters of principled concern to the compromising parties’. Not only is that the most troubling and morally problematic sort of compromise, it is also logically the most central case. I demonstrate that that is so by shifting the focus from inter-personal compromise to the more fundamental intra-personal process underlying it – the compromise we are involved in when adjudicating among our own conflicting values, to decide whether or not to agree to a compromise of the inter-personal sort. This is the subject of the first section of the paper below. Compromise involves resolving conflicts of principles through mutual concessions that are accepted and undertaken by all parties. Doing so may be on-balance desirable, not only from some larger perspective (of social peace, or whatever) but also from each party's own perspective. Nevertheless, from each party's perspective, compromise necessarily involves interacting with, and sometimes contributing to, wrongdoing. Morally, something is lost, even if more is gained on balance. (shrink)