The interpretations in the secondary literature of Suárez’ position in the “classical” debate on the status of universals vary considerably. In this article, the problem is looked at from a slightly different angle: that of Suárez’ basic metaphysics of substantial forms and his views concerning understanding and knowledge. These areas of Suárez’ thought are thoroughly analysed and related to each other. Regarding the question of the status of universals it is argued that Suárez’ thought in the areas of substantial forms (...) and of understanding generally supports the reading of Suarez as a “moderate nominalist”. (shrink)

For many areas of philosophy, we lack an understanding of their developments between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. One such area is the development of the notion of final causation. The rejection of final causation is often described as one of the distinguishing hallmarks of so called Early Modern philosophy in relation to the Scholastic philosophical tradition. Our lack of understanding of the development of this notion in philosophy therefore impedes our ability to write an adequate history of philosophy spanning (...) these centuries. In this article, the notion of final causation as treated in the works of Chrysostom Javellus (1472–1538) and Francis Silvestri (of Ferrara) (1474–1526) is presented. It is argued that the treatment of final causation in these thinkers is already shaped by concerns regarding finality that we find in Early Modern philosophy. (shrink)

The nature and essence of democracy is a bigger issue today than it has been for a long time. With (clearly and allegedly) populist movements in Western Europe and the US, the question of what constitutes democracy has become a contentious issue, though often treated only implicitly. In this article, the nature and essence of democracy is treated with Francisco Suárez (1548-1617) as a guide. This is done on the background of his general metaphysics. It is concluded that Suárez's political (...) philosophy can be called democratic, as political power comes from and ultimately rests with “the people”, according to him. The right balance between “people”, in the plural, and “the people”, in the singular, cannot be calculated, though. On the background of the treatment of Suárez's political philosophy, some conclusions regarding how best to uphold and strengthen democracy are drawn. (shrink)

Bioethicists frequently call for empirical researchers to engage participants and community members in their research, but don't themselves typically engage community members in their normative research. In this article, we describe an effort to include members of the public in normative discussions about the risks, potential benefits, and ethical responsibilities of social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research. We reflect on what might—and might not— be gained from engaging the public in normative scholarship and on lessons learned about public perspectives on (...) the risks and potential benefits of SBG research and the responsible conduct and communication of such research. We also provide procedural lessons for others in bioethics who are interested in engaging members of the public in their research. (shrink)

How should scarce healthcare resources be distributed? This is a contentious issue that became especially pressing during the pandemic. It is often emphasised that studies exploring public views about this question provide valuable input to the issue of healthcare priority setting. While there has been a vast number of such studies it is rarely articulated, more specifically, what the results from these studies would mean for the justification of principles for priority setting. On the one hand, it seems unreasonable that (...) public values would straightforwardly decide the ethical question of how resources should be distributed. On the other hand, in a democratic society, it seems equally unreasonable that they would be considered irrelevant for this question. In this paper we draw on the notion of reflective equilibrium and discuss the relevance and roles that empirical studies may plausibly have for justification in priority setting ethics. We develop a framework for analysing how different kinds of empirical results may have different kinds of implications for justification. (shrink)

REC, or the radical enactive/embodied view of cognition makes a crucial distinction between basic and content-involving cognition. This paper clarifies REC’s views on basic and content-involving cognition, and their relation by replying to a recent criticism claiming that REC is refuted by evidence on affordance perception. It shows how a correct understanding of how basic and contentless cognition relate allows to see how REC can accommodate this evidence, and thus can afford affordance perception.

Logical pluralism is commonly described as the view that there is more than one correct logic. It has been claimed that, in order for that view to be interesting, there has to be at least a potential for rivalry between the correct logics. This paper offers a detailed assessment of this suggestion. I argue that an interesting version of logical pluralism is hard, if not impossible, to achieve. I first outline an intuitive understanding of the notions of rivalry and correctness. (...) I then discuss a natural account of rivalry in terms of disagreement about validity claims and the argument from meaning variance that has been raised against it. I explore a more refined picture of the meaning of validity claims that makes use of the character-content distinction of classical two dimensional semantics. There are three ways in which pluralists can use that framework to argue for the view that different logics may be rivals but could nevertheless be equally correct. I argue that none of them is convincing. (shrink)

This chapter deals with an area of study sometimes called “formal value theory” or “formal axiology”. Roughly characterized, this area investigates the structural and logical properties of value properties and value relations, such as goodness, badness, and betterness. There is a long-standing controversy about whether goodness and badness can, in principle, be measured on a cardinal scale, in a way similar to the measurement of well-understood quantitative concepts like length. Sect. 28.1 investigates this issue, mainly by comparing the properties of (...) the relations “longer than” and “better than”. In Sect. 28.2, some attempts to define goodness and badness in terms of the betterness relation are discussed, and a novel suggestion is made. Sect. 28.3, finally, contains an attempt to define the recently much discussed value relation “on a par with” in terms of the more familiar betterness relation. (shrink)

This paper analyzes a European research project called ‘Deepening Ethical Engagement and Participation in Emerging Nanotechnologies’ with the abbreviation DEEPEN. The DEEPEN’s findings and conclusions on the narratives, public understandings and the lay ethics of nanotechnologies are examined in a critical manner. Through a criticism of the theoretical framings of what constitutes a narrative and the application of a different theoretical framing of narratives, the paper argues that the findings and conclusion of the DEEPEN should be approached with caution as (...) there are several unjustified claims concerning the contextualization of the findings. Such claims pertain to the theoretical framing of narratives, virtue ethics, modernity, lay attitudes, and earlier research. (shrink)

The three-tenet model, which focuses on ‘distributional justice’, ‘procedural justice’, and ‘justice as recognition’, has emerged as the most influential framework in the field of energy justice. Based on critical reviews of the three-tenet model, we identify three challenges that the model currently still faces: (i) a normative challenge on the grounding of the three-tenet model in philosophical theories; (ii) an ‘elite’ challenge on the justification of the use of power in energy-related decision; and (iii) a practical challenge on the (...) application of the three tenets in situations of conflicting justice demands. In this article, we provide the basic contours of a three-step pluralist and pragmatic dialogue model for questions of energy justice that addresses the three challenges, based on the ‘commonwealth model’ of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot. The model proposes to create moral legitimacy in the face of plural demands for energy justice by engaging actors in an inclusive dialogue based on an explicit recognition of Boltanski and Thévenot’s commonwealth model. We thereby make three contributions to the existing literature on energy justice. First, the commonwealth model’s rootedness in normative political theory provides a stronger philosophical underpinning than was available up till now in the literature (challenge 1). Second, it allows one to go beyond the (almost exclusive) focus on injustices perpetrated on disempowered or marginalised groups, to include questions on the justified exercise of power (challenge 2). Third, the commonwealth model shows us practical ways out of situations where conflicting demands for justice are being made (challenge 3). (shrink)

It is uncontroversial to claim that the extent to which health care interventions benefit patients is a relevant consideration for health care priority setting. However, when effects accrue to the individual patient, effects of a more indirect kind may accrue to other individuals as well, such as the patient's children, friends, or partner. If, and if so how, such relational effects should be considered relevant in priority setting is contentious. In this paper, we illustrate this question by using disease‐modifying drugs (...) for Alzheimer's disease as a case in point. The ethical analysis begins by sketching the so‐called prima facie case for ascribing moral weight to relational effects and then moves on to consider a number of objections to it. We argue that, whereas one set of objections may be dismissed, there is another set of arguments that poses more serious challenges for including relational effects in priority setting. (shrink)

In the small village of Kinnarumma in western Sweden an old wooden church was replaced by a new church buildning in the early twentieth century. The old church was de-sacralized by being moved to an open-air museum in Borås and used there for exhibitions and the storage of museum objects. The need for more church premises in the city led to the re-sacralization of the old church in 1930. The transition of Kinnarumma’s old wooden church to museum object, its museumification, (...) was an expression of change in religious heritage, and its re-sacralization expressed an unchanged part of the same heritage. (shrink)

International uproar followed the recent announcement of the birth of twin girls whose genomes had been edited with a breakthrough DNA editing-technology. This technology, called clustered regularly interspaced short palindrome repeats or CRISPR-Cas9, can alter any DNA, including DNA in embryos, meaning that changes can be passed to the offspring of the person that embryo becomes. Should we use gene editing technologies to change ourselves, our children, and future generations to come? The potential uses of CRISPR-Cas9 and other gene editing (...) technologies are unprecedented in human history. By using these technologies, we eradicate certain dreadful diseases. Altering human DNA, however, raises enormously difficult questions. Some of these questions are about safety: Can these technologies be deployed without posing an unreasonable risk of physical harm to current and future generations? Can all physical risks be adequately assessed, and responsibly managed? But gene editing technologies also raise other moral questions, which touch on deeply held, personal, cultural, and societal values: Might such technologies redefine what it means to be healthy, or normal, or cherished? Might they undermine relationships between parents and children, or exacerbate the gap between the haves and have-nots? The broadest form of this second kind of question is the focus of this book: What might gene editing--and related technologies--mean for human flourishing? In the new essays collected here, an interdisciplinary group of scholars asks age--old questions about the nature and well-being of humans in the context of a revolutionary new biotechnology--one that has the potential to change the genetic make-up of both existing people and future generations. Welcoming readers who study related issues and those not yet familiar with the formal study of bioethics, the authors of these essays open up a conversation about the ethics of gene editing. It is through this conversation that citizens can influence laws and the distribution of funding for science and medicine, that professional leaders can shape understanding and use of gene editing and related technologies by scientists, patients, and practitioners, and that individuals can make decisions about their own lives and the lives of their families. (shrink)

The project “A Plurality of Lives” was funded and hosted by the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies at Lund University, Sweden. The aim of the project was to better understand how a second origin of life, either in the form of a discovery of extraterrestrial life, life developed in a laboratory, or machines equipped with abilities previously only ascribed to living beings, will change how we understand and relate to life. Because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the project aim, (...) the project took an interdisciplinary approach with a research group made up of 12 senior researchers representing 12 different disciplines. The project resulted in a joint volume, an international symposium, several new projects, and a network of researchers in the field, all continuing to communicate about and advance the aim of the project. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action by Rhiannon FirthJohn-Erik HanssonRhiannon Firth. Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action. London: Pluto Press, 2022. Paperback, 243 pp. ISBN 9780745340463The COVID-19 pandemic and the unfolding climate crisis, with the multiplication of unprecedented weather events, have shown how urgent it is to reflect on our responses to disaster. Following up on themes she first broached in Coronavirus, Class, and Mutual (...) Aid in the United Kingdom, Rhiannon Firth throws a fresh, anarchist, and utopian light on disaster relief in Disaster Anarchy.1 In this work, Firth seeks to “consider how [anarchist] social movements’ impressive efforts in mutual aid might contribute to a radical and revolutionary reconceptualisation of disasters and the processes of relief and recovery efforts” (19). To do so, she begins by surveying the dominant approaches to disaster relief (chapters 2 and 3) before offering a comprehensive anarchist theoretical critique of these perspectives (chapter 4). Firth then fleshes out her anarchist theory of disaster and community response through two empirical case studies of grassroots relief efforts. In chapter 5 she looks into the Occupy Sandy movement, a New York area community-based response to the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy’s passage in October 2012 in the United States. The final chapter is then dedicated to the COVID-19 Mutual Aid Groups that emerged in the United Kingdom during the pandemic.In building her argument, Firth mobilizes anarchist (and more broadly radical) theory and interviews with participants in both movements. She engages with how activists motivated and understood their participation in mutual aid groups, perceived disaster and relief organizing, sought to solve practical and political problems, and reflected on their experiences. The empirical sections of Disaster Anarchy are thus reminiscent of investigations into the anarchist connections and orientations of contemporary social movements, such as Occupy Wall Street.2 However, Firth’s is a work [End Page 606] of political theory. Her interviews were not conducted simply to describe and analyze the anarchist components of disaster relief social movements. Echoing Uri Gordon, she proposes to take the “worldviews of activists seriously as sources of theoretical knowledge,” leading us to rethink both anarchism and the politics of disaster as a whole (16).3 There lies a key part of the originality of Firth’s contribution to both anarchist theory and to the study of disaster relief. The utopian core of Disaster Anarchy also shines through this movement-based theoretical elaboration of an anarchist challenge to the dominant theories and practices of disaster relief. By examining mutual aid groups in critical dialogue with anarchist theory, Firth raises the possibility of more egalitarian and democratic “utopian alternatives to the status quo,” though, as she reminds us, they always run the risk of being co-opted (20).To set the scene for the desirability of anarchist approaches to disaster relief, Disaster Anarchy opens with Firth’s dissatisfaction with what she identifies as the two main sets of approaches to disaster studies. The first represents “the dominant neoliberal paradigm of disaster politics” and falls under the umbrella of “Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)” (21). Firth contends that, despite some internal variety, all DRR approaches share the three same basic assumptions. First, DRR considers disasters to be “ruptures in the normal functioning of society.” They become a “management problem” that must be dealt with using the tools of political governance to restore order and ensure “systemic stability” (39–40). This can be done both directly through state institutions, and through civil society-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that cooperate with state institutions. DRR then evaluates responses using the categories of “efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” leaving aside “the affects and human impacts of disasters” (40). Second, DRR tends to flatten out differences between disasters, and in the ways in which individuals and groups respond to them. Disaster becomes abstract, and authorities can design sets of responses taken to be effective regardless of local contexts and demands. DRR approaches are therefore particularly congenial to the growth of large governmental “specialised agencies like DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]” that produce knowledge and practices linked to the vertical “management of disaster” (41). Finally... (shrink)

In “Ducking Friendly Fire: Davison on the Grounding Objection”, William Lane Craig responds to a statement of The Grounding Objection articulated by Scott Davison in “Craig on the Grounding Objection to Middle Knowledge”. According to Davison, unless we have an explanation of true counterfactuals that makes reference to actual human persons in specific situations we lack an adequate explanation of how counterfactuals of creaturely freedom could possibly be true. Drawing from and elaborating on Edward Wierenga’s response to The Grounding Objection (...) in “Providence, Middle Knowledge, and the Grounding Objection”, I formulate and motivate a view that satisfies the plausible requirement that the grounds for God’s knowledge of true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are actually existent things while eschewing Davison’s implausibly strong requirement that the things in question must be specific human persons in specific situations. I conclude that, contrary to Davison, facts about uninstantiated human person essences can do at least some of the relevant explanatory work. (shrink)

The purpose of our article is to investigate and report on a document analysis study of social studies education in Argentina. In particular, our focus is on the progression of citizenship education and the inclusion of global perspectives in social studies education within Argentina's elementary schools. Like many other countries in the world, Argentina has followed a growing trend to include global perspectives in their national curricula. We investigate the contours of what this entails for Argentina's elementary schools. We begin (...) the article by situating our purpose in the larger field of global citizenship education. Next, we review the literature and describe Argentina's socio-historical context and report on how that context informs Argentina's education system. We then move to the study's methodology, which is grounded in the following research questions: (1) How is social studies organized in Argentina and how has the purpose of social studies evolved over time? (2) To what degree, if any, are global perspectives represented in Argentina's elementary social studies curricula? To address these questions, we employ document analysis research design (Bowen, 2009). In this analysis, we review Argentina's education policy documents and social studies curricular documents. We follow Fereday and Muir-Cochrane's (2006) three-prong approach for data analysis of documents. We share the findings of the research based on the aforementioned questions. We conclude the article with a discussion of how environmental awareness, human rights, and global competencies are included in the initiative to increase global citizenship education within Argentina's social studies curricula. (shrink)

This article takes up Hortense Spillers’ conception of ‘ungendered’ flesh and Saidiya Hartman’s notion of the ‘position of the unthought’ occupied by the figure of the Black-qua-Slave in order to explore their resonance for considering the interrelations between anti-black racial antagonism, ontological positioning and hegemonic renderings of gender formation and sexual taxonomies. Examining the performance and reception of the recent Broadway revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch starring Taye Diggs as a case study, it asks what role race, and (...) specifically (anti-)blackness, plays in the representation, recognition and intelligibility of proper, (non-)normative gendered corporealities within the dominant imaginary and collective unconscious. (shrink)

Education must be set free it must be returned to parents and to pupils.

The Peter Principle states that employees tend to be promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. In a sophisticated simulation study, Pluchino et al confirmed a version of the principle. However, they also noted that their model has the counterintuitive consequence that “the best ways for improving the efficiency of a given organization are either to promote each time an agent at random or to promote randomly the best and the worst members”. We argue that what promotion rule is (...) used can in general influence employee productivity. Accommodating this psychological aspect of promotion is noted as an open problem by Pluchino et al. Using an amended simulation model we verify that if the incentive induced by promoting the best is strong enough, then that strategy will be optimal. In a final simulation experiment we consider the effect on the efficiency of an organization of using “double standard” promotion strategies, i.e., strategies that depend on the official promotion rule being different from the de facto promotion rule. We show that double standard promotion strategies can be highly efficient, although we also note that in using such strategies the employer may take an unacceptable medium to long term risk. (shrink)

Despite a growing interest in research on spiritual formation, prior studies have not discussed the role of leadership in the formation of Christian character. This article seeks to fill this void by addressing how 1 Thessalonians in general, and 2:1–12 in particular, show Paul's goal and method of leadership for community formation. Written as a letter of friendship to a persecuted church, Paul draws attention to his prior visit in the city as a plumb line for Christian behavior and leadership. (...) As such, the letter contributes to the resocialization of Paul's recent converts, stressing the relationship with himself as well as with each other amidst a hostile environment. The study concludes that Paul's leadership is Christocentric in nature, having modeling, adaptability, and relationships as central components. (shrink)

The author analyzes the inner structure of the philosophy of the Tractatus rather than its relation to the views of other philosophers.

John Broome has argued that alleged cases of value incomparability are really examples of vagueness in the betterness relation. The main premiss of his argument is ‘the collapsing principle’. I argue that this principle is dubious, and that Broome's argument is therefore unconvincing. Correspondence:c1 Erik[email protected].

Although black holes are objects of central importance across many fields of physics, there is no agreed upon definition for them, a fact that does not seem to be widely recognized. Physicists in different fields conceive of and reason about them in radi- cally different, and often conflicting, ways. All those ways, however, seem sound in the relevant contexts. After examining and comparing many of the definitions used in practice, I consider the problems that the lack of a universally accepted (...) definition leads to, and discuss whether one is in fact needed for progress in the physics of black holes. I conclude that, within reasonable bounds, the profusion of different definitions is in fact a virtue, making the investigation of black holes possible and fruitful in all the many different kinds of problems about them that physicists consider, although one must take care in trying to translate results between fields. (shrink)

I examine the debate between substantivalists and relationalists about the ontological character of spacetime and conclude it is not well posed. I argue that the hole argument does not bear on the debate, because it provides no clear criterion to distinguish the positions. I propose two such precise criteria and construct separate arguments based on each to yield contrary conclusions, one supportive of something like relationalism and the other of something like substantivalism. The lesson is that one must fix an (...) investigative context in order to make such criteria precise, but different investigative contexts yield inconsistent results. I examine questions of existence about spacetime structures other than the spacetime manifold itself to argue that it is more fruitful to focus on pragmatic issues of physicality, a notion that lends itself to several different explications, all of philosophical interest, none privileged a priori over any of the others. I conclude by suggesting an extension of the lessons of my arguments to the broader debate between realists and instrumentalists. 1 Introduction2 The Hole Argument3 Limits of Spacetimes4 Pointless Constructions5 The Debate between Substantivalists and Relationalists6 Existence and Physicality: An Embarassment of Spacetime Structures7 Valedictory Remarks on Realism and Instrumentalism, and the Structure of Our Knowledge of Physics. (shrink)