O objetivo deste artigo é um estudo da virtude em Aristóteles. O termo areté é frequentemente traduzido como “virtude”, mas sua real significação remete-nos à ideia de “excelência”. Cada atividade humana, prática, possui uma areté particular. No domínio político, além da deliberação, Aristóteles expõe a noção de phronesis. Esta última é a excelência do líder político.

This volume explores how Catholicism began and continues to open its doors to the wider world and to other confessions in embracing ecumenism, thanks to the vision and legacy of the Second Vatican Council. It explores such themes as the twentieth century context preceding the council; parallels between Vatican II and previous councils; its distinctively pastoral character; the legacy of the council in relation to issues such as church-world dynamics, as well as to ethics, social justice, economic activity. Several chapters (...) discuss the role of women in the church before, during, and since the council. Others discern inculturation in relation to Vatican II. The book also contains a wide and original range of ecumenical considerations of the council, including by and in relation to Free Church, Reformed, Orthodox, and Anglican perspectives. Finally, it considers the Council’s ongoing promise and remaining challenges with regard to ecumenical issues, including a groundbreaking essay on the future of ecumenical dialogue by Cardinal Walter Kasper. (shrink)

O presente trabalho é fruto de encontros com o Cinema, na Disciplina de Atividades Culturais, componente curricular do curso de formação de professores da Faculdade de Educação da Universidade Federal Fluminense. O objetivo consistiu em produzir Experiências Estéticas com as imagens-movimento da linguagem cinematográfica, para além das usuais formas didatizantes e utilitaristas de exemplificar conteúdos disciplinares. Apostamos na potência das imagens-movimento se constituírem Imagens-afecção, dispositivo estético acionador de relações entre pensamento e linguagem, de modo a contribuir para uma pausa no (...) tempo, possibilitando tempo para olharmos, com mais cuidado, as condições existenciais históricamente constituídas no mundo contemporâneo. Enfim, foi através do cinema como dispositivo sócio analítico e recurso metodológico na formação de estudantes de graduação em licenciaturas, que resultou esse artigo. A produção escolhida é um longa metragem de animação cuja história se desvela sob o olhar de uma criança diante da descoberta de um mundo contaminado pelas adversidades produzidas pelo contexto capitalista. Como suporte teórico nos debruçamos em autores que analisam o modelo político e socioeconômico capitalista e seus efeitos sobre a condição humana. Através de O Menino e o mundo, aluna e professora, procuram travar conversações a respeito de suas concepções acerca do campo educacional, do mundo do trabalho, do consumismo e da alienação decorrente dos atuais modos de produção. Vale enfatizar que o artigo em si, é resultante da abordagem metodológica da disciplina. (shrink)

Článek ukazuje pohled na utváření novověké koncepce pokroku v dílech Bernarda Le Boviera de Fontenelle. Idea pokroku byla poprvé přesně zformulována právě ve Fontenellových pracích. Podnětem pro Fontenellovy úvahy byla intelektuální debata querelle des anciens et des modernes. Tato diskuze měla rozhodnout o nadřazenosti novověku nad antikou nebo naopak. Fontenelle se debaty účastnil a závěry, k nimž došel, dovršily jeho teorii pokroku, jíž se věnoval nejen téměř ve všech pracích, ale též ve chvalořečích.

Este artigo resulta das experiências vividas no decorrer da realização de nosso trabalho de "filosofia com crianças", que se apresentou a nós como uma rica experiência de pensamento. As crianças nos possibilitaram vislumbrar a filosofia como condição imanente ao infante, o que implica no encontro de si com o outro e na criação de novas formas de ser e estar no mundo. Atentamos para o fato de que a escuta da infância passa necessariamente pelo ato de parar para escutar a (...) criança que existe em nós. Nesse processo de escuta, a nossa condição humana se abre, se descobre, se amplia, potencializando-se. Observamos que o deslocamento desse exercício de escuta para a escola aponta múltiplas possibilidades de desencadear processos internos nas crianças de modo a criarem suas próprias "paisagens", reorganizando assim seus padrões de compreensão do mundo e da vida. (shrink)

John Searle je profesor filosofie na University of California v Berkeley. Do filosofie se nesmazatelně zapsal již svou ranou teorií řečových aktů , která významně ovlivnila současné pojetí jazyka. Searle v ní klade důraz na mínění mluvčího a posluchače a na roli jejich mínění při ustavování významu. Searlův zájem o mysl a intencionalitu později vyústil v komplexní teorii intencionality a v úvahy o ontologii mysli a vědomí a o začlenění vědomí do světa přírody . Se zájmem o mysl souvisí i (...) slavný argument obvykle nazývaný „čínská místnost“, který je zaměřen proti teorii silné umělé inteligence, tedy proti názoru, že mysl může vzniknout implementací počítačového programu. Úvahy o jazyce a intencionalitě také předznačily Searlovo další velké téma a další originální příspěvek k filosofii – jeho ontologii sociální reality , na níž v současné době dále pracuje. Jiným Searlovým důležitým filosofickým tématem je racionalita . Následující rozhovor se uskutečnil u příležitosti Searlovy návštěvy v Praze ve dnech 8.–11. října 2007, kdy Searle přednesl dvě přednášky na téma sociální reality a úlohy jazyka v jejím ustavování. Za laskavou spolupráci při zpracování rozhovoru patří dík paní Dagmar Searle. (shrink)

This paper describes the corner-stones of a means-ends approach to the philosophy of inductive inference. I begin with a fallibilist ideal of convergence to the truth in the long run, or in the 'limit of inquiry'. I determine which methods are optimal for attaining additional epistemic aims (notably fast and steady convergence to the truth). Means-ends vindications of (a version of) Occam's Razor and the natural generalizations in a Goodmanian Riddle of Induction illustrate the power of this approach. The paper (...) establishes a hierarchy of means-ends notions of empirical success, and discusses a number of issues, results and applications of means-ends epistemology. (shrink)

Drawing on Catherine Malabou’s notion of plasticity, this article argues for a conception of resilience as plastic. Resilience has proven an important concept in health care, describing how we manage life-changing illnesses. Yet, resilience is not without its critics, who suggest it neglects a political, social, or personal dimension in illness. In this article, I propose that a concept of plastic resilience can address these criticisms. On this account, success should not be based on a return to function, but rather (...) on how actively we are involved in the formation of a new self after illness. I address some approaches that can benefit from “plastic resilience,” namely, art therapy, expert companionship, and shared decision-making. In each case, I underline how we should help patients thematize and engage with their new selves, while also being constantly vigilant for how these changes might impact our current assumptions around their preferences for treatment. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Communication is complicated, and so is the ethics of communication. We communicate about innumerable topics, to varied audiences, using a gamut of technologies. The ethics of communication, therefore, has to address a wide range of technical, ethical and epistemic requirements. In this book, Onora O'Neill shows how digital technologies have made communication more demanding: they can support communication with huge numbers of distant and dispersed recipients; they can amplify or suppress selected content; and they can target or ignore selected audiences. (...) Often this is done anonymously, making it harder for readers and listeners, viewers and browsers, to assess which claims are true or false, reliable or misleading, flaky or fake. So how can we empower users to assess and evaluate digital communication, so that they can tell which standards it meets and which it flouts? That is the challenge which this book explores. (shrink)

Aberrant consumer behaviour costs firms millions of pounds a year, and the Internet has provided young techno-literate consumers with a new medium to exploit businesses. This paper addresses Internet related ethics and describes the ways in which young consumers misdemean on the Internet and their attitudes towards these. Using a sample of 219 generation Y consumers, the study identified 24 aberrant behaviours which grouped into five factors; illegal, questionable activities, hacking related, human Internet trade and downloading. Those perceived as least (...) wrong were; "Downloading movie and music files from the Internet for free". The consequences of these behaviours have implications for educators, consumer policy and marketers. (shrink)

"Content and Comportment argues persuasively that the answer to some long-standing questions in epistemology and metaphysics lies in taking up the neglected question of the role of our bodily activity in establishing connections between representational states—knowledge and belief in particular—and their objects in the world. It takes up these ideas from both current mainstream analytic philosophy—Frege, Dummett, Davidson, Evans—and from mainstream continental work—Heidegger and his commentators and critics—and bings them together successfully in a way that should surprise only those who (...) persist in maintaining this barren dichotymization of the field.". (shrink)

Any theory of experience which postulates that brain mechanisms generate "raw feel" encounters the impassable "explanatory gap" separating physics from phenomenology.

In this paper, I provide an easy road to nominalism which does not rely on a Field-type nominalization strategy for mathematics. According to this proposal, applications of mathematics to science, and alleged mathematical explanations of physical phenomena, only emerge when suitable physical interpretations of the mathematical formalism are advanced. And since these interpretations are rarely distinguished from the mathematical formalism, the impression arises that mathematical explanations derive from the mathematical formalism alone. I correct this misimpression by pointing out, in the (...) cases recently discussed by Mark Colyvan, exactly where the interpretations of the formalism were invoked and the function they played in the resulting explanations. A viable form of easy - road nominalism, which is also sensitive to scientific practice, then arises. (shrink)

Qualia have proved difficult to integrate into a broadly physicalistic worldview. In this paper, I argue that despite popular wisdom in the philosophy of mind, qualia’s intrinsicality is not sufficient for their non-reducibility. Second, I diagnose why philosophers mistakenly focused on intrinsicality. I then proceed to argue that qualia are categorical and end with some reflections on how the conceptual territory looks when we keep our focus on categoricity.

G. A. Cohen has argued that there is a surprising truth in conservatism—namely, that there is a reason for some valuable things to be preserved, even if they could be replaced with other, more valuable things. This conservative thesis is motivated, Cohen suggests, by our judgments about a range of hypothetical cases. After reconstructing Cohen's conservative thesis, I argue that the relevant judgments about these cases do not favor the conservative thesis over standard, nonconservative axiological views. But I then argue (...) that there is a Mirrored Histories case that is such that, if one shares Cohen's conservative attitude, judgments about this case favor Cohen's conservative thesis over a wide range of non-conservative axiological views. Reflection on this case also suggests a different explanation of apparently conservative judgments that merits consideration in its own right. (shrink)

The increasing awareness of personal health responsibility had led to the claim that patients with ‘self-inflicted’ conditions have less of a right to treatment at the public's expense than patients whose conditions arose from ‘uncontrollable’ causes. This paper suggests that regardless of any social decision as to the limits and scope of individual responsibility for health, the moral framework for discussing this issue is equality. In order to reach a consensus, discourse should be according to the common basis of all (...) theories of justice, Aristotle's formal principle of justice: ‘equals must be treated equally and unequals must be treated unequally, in proportion to the relevant inequality’. This paper deals with the question of whether and under what circumstances risk-taking behaviour could be regarded as a ‘relevant inequality’ with respect to the right to health care. Following a discussion of the relevant inequalities in health care, the conclusion is reached that the fact that the condition was avoidably caused by the patient and is therefore his or her fault can not be regarded necessarily as a relevant inequality. Therefore, the issue is one of societal support for health care; after defining relevant inequalities in this respect, the paper attempts to apply them to self-inflicted conditions. This analysis reveals that, in theory, it may be just to restrict societal support in such cases. However, the application of this conclusion requires proof of many factual claims—for which there is often very limited evidence. (shrink)

After nearly fifty years of mea culpas and explanatory additions, the biopsychosocial model is no closer to a life of its own. Bolton and Gillett give it a strong philosophical boost in The Biopsychosocial Model of Health and Disease, but they overlook the model’s deeply inconsistent position on dualism. Moreover, because metaphysical confusion has clinical ramifications in medicine, their solution sidesteps the model’s most pressing clinical faults. But the news is not all bad. We can maintain the merits of holism (...) as we let go of the inchoate bag of platitudes that is the biopsychosocial model. We can accept holism as the metaphysical open door that it is, just a willingness to recognize the reality of human experience, and the sense in which that reality forces medicine to address biological, psychological, and social aspects of health. This allows us to finally characterize Engel’s driving idea in accurate philosophical terms, as acceptance of consciousness in the context of medical science. This will not entirely pin down medicine’s stance on dualism, but it will position it clearly enough to readily improve patient care. (shrink)

Self, Language, and World: Problems from Kant, Sellars, and Rosenberg Edited by James R. O'Shea and Eric M. Rubenstein Introduction KANT Willem deVries, Kant, Rosenberg, and the Mirror of Philosophy David Landy, The Premise That Even Hume Must Accept LANGUAGE AND MIND William G. Lycan, Rosenberg On Proper Names Douglas Long, Why Life is Necessary for Mind: The Significance of Animate Behavior Dorit Bar-On and Mitchell Green, Lionspeak: Communication, Expression, and Meaning David Rosenthal, The Mind and Its Expression MIND AND (...) KNOWLEDGE Jeffrey Sicha, The Manifest Image: the Sensory and the Mental Bruce Aune, Rosenberg on Knowing Joseph C. Pitt, Sellarsian Antifoundationalism and Scientific Realism Matthew Chrisman, The Aim of Belief and the Goal of Truth: Reflections on Rosenberg James O’Shea, Conceptual Thinking and Nonconceptual Content: A Sellarsian Divide ONTOLOGY Anton Koch, Persons as Mirroring the World Eric M. Rubenstein, Form and Content, Substance and Stuff Ralf Stoecker, On Being a Realist About Death William G. Lycan, Biographical Remarks on Jay F. Rosenberg Scholarly Publications of Jay F. Rosenberg. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of contemporary proponents of psychoanalysis have sought to derive support for their conjectures about the _dynamic_ unconscious from the empirical evidence in favor of the _cognitive_ unconscious. It is our contention, however, that far from supporting the dynamic unconscious, recent work in cognitive science suggests that the time has come to dispense with this concept altogether. In this paper we defend this claim in two ways. First, we argue that any attempt to shore up the (...) dynamic unconscious with the cognitive unconscious is bound to fail, simply because the latter, as it is understood in contemporary cognitive science, is incompatible with the former, as it is traditionally conceived by psychoanalytic theory. Second, we show how psychological phenomena traditionally cited as evidence for the operation of a dynamic unconscious can be accommodated more parsimoniously by other means. (shrink)

There have been calls for mandatory vaccination legislation to be introduced into the UK in order to tackle the national and international rise of vaccine-preventable disease. While some countries have had some success associated with mandatory vaccination programmes, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health insist this is not a suitable option for the UK, a country which has seen historical opposition to vaccine mandates. There is a lack of comprehensive data to demonstrate a direct link between mandatory vaccination (...) legislation and increased uptake. While there are examples whereby there has been an improvement, some studies suggest that comparable results can be obtained by strongly recommending vaccinations instead. The RCPCH insist that healthcare workers are ideally placed to engage and inform parents to make every interaction a ‘vaccine opportunity’. This paper calls for a principled, rational approach to interpretations of autonomy which underpin parental informed consent. MacLean’s concept of mutual persuasion could be a vehicle to ensuring parents are suitably informed of both the material risks associated with vaccine choices and to consider the rationality of their decisions, while ultimately upholding parental autonomy. It is argued that this, alongside infrastructural improvement, could create a more sustainable, long-term improvement in childhood vaccination rates in the UK than mandatory vaccination. (shrink)

Although the idea of the public interest features prominently in many accounts of deliberative democracy, the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest is rarely spelt out with any degree of precision. In this article, I identify and defend one particular way of framing this relationship. I begin by arguing that people can deliberate about the public interest only if the public interest is, in principle, identifiable independently of their deliberations. Of course, some pluralists claim that the public interest (...) is an implausible idea, which casts doubt on the idea that there might be something for people to deliberate about. Yet while, following Brian Barry, we can get around this problem by defining the public interest as an interest in which everyone shares qua member of the public, what still needs to be explained is why people should be prepared to privilege this particular capacity. I argue that the account of political equality with which deliberative democracy is bound up offers a compelling explanation of this sort, even if it also gives rise to some difficult questions of feasibility. I conclude by considering the charge that any political scheme that framed the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest in this way would be undesirable. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of standards being used in the domain of digital cultural heritage with focus on the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard created by the Library of Congress in the United States of America. The process of digitization of cultural heritage requires silo breaking in a number of areas—one area is that of academic disciplines to enable the performance of rich interdisciplinary work. This lays the foundation for the emancipation of the second form of silo which are (...) the silos of knowledge, both traditional and born digital, held in individual institutions, such as galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Disciplinary silo breaking is the key to unlocking these institutional knowledge silos. Interdisciplinary teams, such as developers and librarians, work together to make the data accessible as open data on the “semantic web”. Description logic is the area of mathematics which underpins many ontology building applications today. Creating these ontologies requires a human–machine symbiosis. Currently in the cultural heritage domain, the institutions’ role is that of provider of this open data to the national aggregator which in turn can make the data available to the trans-European aggregator known as Europeana. Current ingests to the aggregators are in the form of machine readable cataloguing metadata which is limited in the richness it provides to disparate object descriptions. METS can provide this richness. (shrink)

The grammarian Caesellius Vindex, writing under Trajan, criticized Furius Antias for his newly coined verbs lutescere, noctescere, opulescere and vīrescere. Their meanings in classical Latin are classified by Nicolaie as follows: becoming, the intensification of a quality, the acquisition of a quality. Their number increases in post-classical Latin, in which we also find them used causatively as transitive verbs, e.g. innotescere ‘make known’; Gellius' causative use of inolesco is mentioned below. Incohative verbs descend to Romance languages, where forms in -o (...) and in -sco both contribute to some conjugations, e.g. Fr. finir, finissant; It. finire, finisco, and to English. (shrink)

A necessary condition for the development of a philosophical culture is the possession of a history of philosophy that conserves the experience of posing and discussing philosophical problems. Apologetics, dogmatism, a rigid devotion to the class approach, and ignoring universal human values for a long time dominated our social science and substantially deformed the way the history of philosophy was taught, giving rise to a number of stereotypes that hinder the revival of the skills of a culture of professional philosophizing. (...) The purpose of the present article is to draw the attention of philosophers to the problem of presenting material on the history of philosophy in a philosophy course. (shrink)

The second meeting of British and Soviet philosophers, continuing the discussion of problems of ethics begun in the fall of 1968 in England, was held in Tbilisi in October 1969. This time the British philosophers journeyed to our country, by agreement between the Alliance of Friendship Societies and the Society of Friends . The group of five included philosophy teachers at a number of universities: David Bell , with whom we were well acquainted from our debates in East Greenstead, Steven (...) Lucas , Edward Honderik , Bernard Harrison , whom we had also met during our visit to Brighton, and the Secretary for European Affairs of the British Quaker organization, Alan Davis. On our side, the discussion was conducted by L. N. Mitrokhin and O. G. Drobnitskii , A. A. Ivin, N. Z. Chavchavadze, and A. F. Begiashvili. The Alliance of Friendship Societies was represented by the assistant chief of the Division of British Countries, F. I. Fedosov. (shrink)

I briefly defend the following claims in response to my critics: (1) We cannot make a principled division between features of contingent reality that do and features that don’t "cry our for explanation." (2) The physical data indicating fine-tuning provide confirmation of the hypothesis of a personal necessary cause of the universe over against an impersonal necessary cause, notwithstanding the fact that the probability of either hypothesis, if true, would be 1. (3) Theism that commits to God’s necessary existence makes (...) more sense than theism that denies it. (4) God is likely to have created an infinity of universes, and this conclusion helps with (though does not solve) the many problems of evil. (shrink)

This article discusses the role of moral argument in the Constitutional case law of the Irish courts. It looks at the debate on the constitutional morality of sexuality in four major cases: a 1973 case protecting the right to use contraceptives; a 1984 case which upholds discrimination against gay men; a 1987 case limiting access to abortion information; and a 1992 case which finds a limited right to abortion in the Constitution. These cases show the role of the courts in (...) contributing to a debate on political morality, both proposing new visions of political morality, and elaborating on the requirements of the current one. (shrink)

The object of Theological Ethics as presented by Hans Ulrich is immediately the content of the experience of God; reflectively it is God himself turned towards us; doubly reflected on, it is the inversion of our understanding of the good or conversion. The concept of an object may be traced to the discussion of the sciences from Schleiermacher to Barth. Three questions are put to it: (i) Does it assimilate the study too much to descriptive reason, as opposed to practical (...) reason? (ii) Does it narrow the study's range of interests so as to exclude the created world? (iii) Does it result in an idealised `creaturely man', wholly determined by his end and dissociated from the empirical man who may confront us as a neighbour? (shrink)