If the paradigm of secularization as replacement was falsified by the permanent vitality of the religious dimension on the world horizon and in the public sphere, the universalization of the paradigm of secularization as differentiation, on the contrary, turns out to be an essential guarantee of the maintenance and promotion of the rule of law and human rights. From an alternative perspective to both secularism and fundamentalism, public theology today is therefore called upon to reconstruct and argumentatively justify the function (...) of religious freedom as a basic principle of democratic society, within the framework of cognitive and normative disjunction between religion and citizenship which rules modernity. It is urgent to theologically demystify the regressive manipulation of this principle, as a vector of a democratically disruptive tribal pluralism, in contradiction with its nature as a catalyst for an integrative pluralism essential for social cohesion and the common good. (shrink)

Philosophers agree that an important part of our knowledge is acquired via testimony. One of the main objectives of social epistemology is therefore to specify the conditions under which a hearer is justified in accepting a proposition stated by a source. Non-reductionists, who think that testimony could be considered as an a priori source of knowledge, as well as reductionists, who think that another type of justification has to be added to testimony, share a common conception about children development. Non-reductionists (...) believe that infants and children are fundamentally gullible and their gullibility could be seen as an example for justifying testimony, while reductionists believe that this gullibility is merely an exception that should be taken into account. The objective of this paper is to review contemporary literature in developmental psychology providing empirical grounds likely to clarify this philosophical debate. What emerges from current research is a more elaborated vision of children’s attitude toward testimony. Even at a very young age, children do not blindly swallow information coming from testimony; doubtful or contradictory information is automatically screened by their cognitive system. Even if they are unable to give positive reasons for the acceptance of a given testimony, young children are not gullible. Such empirical findings tend to call into question the radical opposition between reductionism and non-reductionism. (shrink)

Recent metaphysics has turned its focus to two notions that are—as well as having a common Aristotelian pedigree—widely thought to be intimately related: grounding and essence. Yet how, exactly, the two are related remains opaque. We develop a unified and uniform account of grounding and essence, one which understands them both in terms of a generalized notion of identity examined in recent work by Fabrice Correia, Cian Dorr, Agustín Rayo, and others. We argue that the account comports with antecedently (...) plausible principles governing grounding, essence, and identity taken individually, and illuminates how the three interact. We also argue that the account compares favorably to an alternative unification of grounding and essence recently proposed by Kit Fine. (shrink)

This paper suggests that the enactive approach to ethics could benefit from engaging a dialogue with the phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas, a philosopher who has given ethics a decisive role in the understanding of our social life. Taking the enactive approach of Colombetti and Torrance as a starting point, we show how Levinas’ philosophy, with the key notions of face, otherness, and responsibility among others can complement and enrich the enactive view of ethics. Specifically, we argue that Levinas can provide, (...) on the one hand, a phenomenological characterisation of ethics itself, of its nature and fundamental meaning, and on the other, an account of how sociality, affectivity and embodiment, as presented in Colombetti and Torrance’s work, combine to bring about the ethical experience. However, we also point out that introducing Levinas to the enactive approach could be challenging. It is not obvious how sense-making and value-making, as centred on the precariousness and potential death of the subject, would account for the ethical experience as grounded on the precariousness and potential death of the other. (shrink)

Realism about tense is the view that the contrast between what was, what is and what will be the case is real, and not merely a projection of our ways of thinking. Does this view entail realism about temporal passage, namely the view that time really passes, in the same sense of ‘real’? We argue that the answer is affirmative for many versions of tense realism, and indeed for all sensible versions. We thereby address an important conceptual issue regarding these (...) two forms of realism and rebut recent claims that tense realism is compatible with anti-realism about temporal passage. (shrink)

Psychologists have emphasized children's acquisition of information through firsthand observation. However, many beliefs are acquired from others' testimony. In two experiments, most 4yearolds displayed sceptical trust in testimony. Having heard informants' accurate or inaccurate testimony, they anticipated that informants would continue to display such differential accuracy and they trusted the hitherto reliable informant. Yet they ignored the testimony of the reliable informant if it conflicted with what they themselves had seen. By contrast, threeyearolds were less selective in trusting a reliable (...) informant. Thus, young children check testimony against their own experience and increasingly recognise that some informants are more trustworthy than others. (shrink)

This paper studies the English poems of Richard Crashaw from a historicist and formalist perspective. It specifically considers Crashaw’s poetry in its religious but also intellectual and early scien­tific context to investigate the frequently overlooked influence of science on his poetry. Metaphors drawn from alchemy and particularly from the trans­formation of matter to achieve its purification and spiritualisation enrich the poet’s expression of mystical devotion to underline that access to the spiritual as well as mystical union with Christ are deeply (...) rooted in the devotee’s body. Representations of the earth as a chemical laboratory focus on materiality and corporality to emphasise the constant movement animating matter. A form of spiritual alchemy underscores Crashaw’s Christocentrism and references to the metamorphoses of matter consistently aim to express mystical union. A meta-poetic analysis eventually highlights a significant analogy between reading and alchemical processes in order to demonstrate the anagogical aim of Crashaw’s verse and the way his poems work on his reader’s heart to lift his soul. References to liquefaction, distillation or sublimation echo the published works of mystics but alchemical conceits based on symbolically evocative topoï and polysemic vocabulary reinforce the importance of the corporal in the expe­rience of mystical union. (shrink)

In this article, we present, assess and give reasons to reject the popular claim that shame is essentially social. We start by presenting several theses which the social claim has motivated in the philosophical literature. All of them, in their own way, regard shame as displaying a structure in which "others" play an essential role. We argue that while all these theses are true of some important families of shame episodes, none of them generalize so as to motivate the conclusion (...) that shame is an essentially social emotion. We consider each thesis in turn, explaining in the process their connections with one another as well as the constraints on a theory of shame they help uncover. Finally, we show how a non-social picture of shame is not only capable of meeting these constraints, but has the further virtue of shedding light on those situations in which others seem to play no role in why we feel shame. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore in a systematic way the rationality of emotions elicited when we engage with works of fiction. I first lay out the approach to the emotions on which my discussion is premised. Next, I concentrate on two facets of emotional rationality—the first pertains to the relation between emotions and the mental states on which they are based, the second to the relation between emotions and the judgements and behaviour they elicit. These observations about (...) emotional rationality are then applied to emotions elicited by works of fiction. After having distinguished several families of emotions, I concentrate on what I call blob-emotions and emotions-for. I argue that, given their nature as direct responses to a restricted range of stimuli, blob-emotions are not irrational. As regards emotions-for fictional entities, I emphasize that a subject’s rationality shows in the way her emotions-for respond to evidence. On this basis, I discard an influential reason to think that emotions-for fictional entities are irrational. Finally, I offer an argument to conclude that they are typically correct and rational. (shrink)

I compare the semantic approach to the logic of worldly grounding put forward in my “Grounding and Truth-Functions” (2010) with the approach developed by Fine in “Guide to Ground” (2012a) and “The Pure Logic of Ground” (2012b). I argue that both are defective in some respects, and offer an alternative approach in the same spirit but based on a new semantic framework, which combines the best aspects of the frameworks within which the previous approaches were developed.

There is a growing literature in neuroethics dealing with the problem of cognitive neuroenhancement for healthy adults. However, discussions on this topic have tended to focus on abstract theoretical positions while concrete policy proposals and detailed models are scarce. Furthermore, discussions tend to rely solely on data from the US, while international perspectives are mostly neglected. Therefore, there is a need for a volume that deals with cognitive enhancement comprehensively in three important ways: a) with conceptual implications stemming from different (...) points of view; b) with ethical, social and legal perspectives that would not be limited to one part of the world but reflect on the current situation in countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America; and c) with discussions of concrete law and policy options. Contributors for the conceptual implications section will elaborate an important general issue (e.g. ethical acceptability of direct-to-consumer-marketing in case of cognitive enhancement drugs). Contributors for international perspectives section will provide a clear discussion on normative issues and cultural values, along with an analysis of empirical data on public attitudes on cognitive enhancement and/or prevalence (specific to the country in question). Contributors for law and policy section will offer a justification for the general policy type they argue for (1. prohibition, 2. discourage use, 3. laissez-faire, 4. encourage use, and 5. mandatory use) in the case of specific cognitive enhancement measure. Furthermore, they would evaluate the possible impact of a detailed regulatory model on consumption and demand, fairness in competitive settings and the social pressure to enhance. (shrink)

This monograph is a detailed study, and systematic defence, of the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT), first conceived by C.D. Broad. The book offers a coherent, logically perspicuous and ideologically lean formulation of GBT, defends it against the most notorious objections to be found in the extant philosophical literature, and shows how it can be derived from a more general theory, consistent with relativistic spacetime, on the pre-relativistic assumption of an absolute and total temporal order. -/- The authors devise (...) axiomatizations of GBT and its competitors which, against the backdrop of a shared quantified tense logic, significantly improves the prospects of their comparative assessment. Importantly, neither of these axiomatizations involves commitment to properties of presentness, pastness or futurity. The authors proceed to address, and defuse, a number of objections that have been marshaled against GBT, including the so-called epistemic objection according to which the theory invites skepticism about our temporal location. The challenge posed by relativistic physics is met head-on, by replacing claims about temporal variation by claims about variation across spacetime. -/- The book aims to achieve the greatest possible rigor. The background logic is set out in detail, as are the principles governing the notions of precedence and temporal location. The authors likewise devise a novel spacetime logic suited for the articulation, and comparative assessment, of relativistic theories of time. The book comes with three technical appendices which include soundness and completeness proofs for the systems corresponding to GBT and its competitors, in both their pre-relativistic and relativistic forms. -/- The book is primarily directed at researchers and graduate students working on the philosophy of time or temporal logic, but is of interest to metaphysicians and philosophical logicians more generally. (shrink)

Fabrice Teroni,Julien Deonna | : Selon l’analyse FA des concepts évaluatifs, notre conception d’un objet comme ayant une valeur donnée est la conception d’une certaine attitude évaluative appropriée à son endroit. Cet article examine deux défis que doit relever cette analyse. Le défi psychologique exige de l’analyse qu’elle fasse appel à des attitudes qui soient à même d’éclairer nos concepts évaluatifs, tout en ne présupposant pas la maîtrise de ces mêmes concepts. Le défi normatif réclame quant à lui que (...) la compréhension du caractère approprié des attitudes pertinentes s’articule autour d’une forme de normativité intimement liée à la nature de ces attitudes, sans pour autant dépendre de la maîtrise des concepts évaluatifs analysés. Afin d’établir si l’analyse FA peut relever ces défis, nous commençons par clarifier la nature des attitudes auxquelles il convient de faire appel. Dans la première section, nous considérons des attitudes génériques comme les désirs et présentons des raisons de privilégier des attitudes plus spécifiques, à savoir les émotions. La suite de la discussion évalue la plausibilité d’une analyse FA souscrivant à l’une ou l’autre des approches contemporaines en théorie des émotions. La deuxième section souligne qu’il est difficile d’associer l’analyse FA aux théories en termes de contenu évaluatif et la troisième présente les atouts d’une théorie en termes d’attitudes évaluatives. Dans la dernière section, nous revenons au défi normatif et esquissons une manière de le relever. | : According to the FA analysis of evaluative concepts, our conception of an object as having a given value is the conception of a given evaluative attitude towards it as being appropriate. In this paper, we explore two challenges that this analysis has to take up. The psychological challenge requires that the analysis appeal to attitudes that are apt to shed light on our evaluative concepts while not presupposing the mastery of these same concepts. The normative challenge requires that we understand the appropriateness of the relevant attitudes in terms of a kind of normativity intimately related to these attitudes, again without this presupposing the mastery of the relevant evaluative concepts. To determine whether the FA analysis can meet these challenges, we start by clarifying the sort of attitudes the analysis should appeal to. In section 1, we consider generic attitudes like desires and give some reasons to favor more specific attitudes, namely emotions. The ensuing discussion assesses the prospects of an FA analysis in light of contemporary accounts of emotions. In section 2, we argue that the FA analysis should not be combined with accounts according to which emotions have evaluative contents and then offer, in section 3, some reasons for combining the FA with an account in terms of evaluative attitudes. In section 4, we show how this allows for solving the normative challenge. (shrink)

I testi biblici si guardano, rinviano l'uno all'altro, si citano si rispecchiano l'uno nell'altro, e il frutto di tale rispecchiamento precipita a formare nuovi strati testuali.

Say that two sentences are factually equivalent when they describe the same facts or situations, understood as worldly items, i.e. as bits of reality rather than as representations of reality. The notion of factual equivalence is certainly of central interest to philosophical semantics, but it plays a role in a much wider range of philosophical areas. What is the logic of factual equivalence? This paper attempts to give a partial answer to this question, by providing an answer the following, more (...) specific question: Given a standard propositional language with negation, conjunction and disjunction as primitive operators, which sentences of the language should be taken to be factually equivalent by virtue of their logical form? The system for factual equivalence advocated in this paper is a proper fragment of the first-degree system for the logic of analytic equivalence put forward in the late seventies by R. B. Angell. I provide the system with two semantics, both formulated in terms of the notion of a situation’s being fittingly described by a linguistic item. In the final part of the paper I argue, contra a view I defended in my “Grounding and Truth-Functions”, that the logic for factual equivalence I advocate here should be preferred to Angell’s logic if one wishes to follow the general conception of the relationships between factual equivalence and the notion of grounding put forward in the 2010 paper. (shrink)

Some of the most eminent and enduring philosophical questions concern matters of priority: what is prior to what? What 'grounds' what? Is, for instance, matter prior to mind? Recently, a vivid debate has arisen about how such questions have to be understood. Can the relevant notion or notions of priority be spelled out? And how do they relate to other metaphysical notions, such as modality, truth-making or essence? This volume of new essays, by leading figures in contemporary metaphysics, is the (...) first to address and investigate the metaphysical idea that certain facts are grounded in other facts. An introduction introduces and surveys the debate, examining its history as well as its central systematic aspects. The volume will be of wide interest to students and scholars of metaphysics. (shrink)

Social learning is likely to include affective processes: it is necessary for newcomers to discover what value to attach to objects, persons, and events in a given social environment. This learning relies largely on the evaluation of others’ emotional expressions. This study has two objectives. Firstly, we compare two closely related concepts that are employed to describe the use of another person’s appraisal to make sense of a given situation: social appraisal and social referencing. We contend that social referencing constitutes (...) a type of social appraisal. Secondly, we introduce the concept of affective social learning with the hope that it may help to discriminate the different ways in which emotions play a critical role in the processes of socialization. (shrink)

L’introduzione al fascicolo Analogia e medioevo sive vent’anni di analogie presenta il numero 18 di "Doctor Virtualis" e traccia le tappe fondamentali della rivista. Si delineano dapprima alcune linee della storia della rivista e le sue ispirazioni teoriche e storiografiche principali, per poi mettere in luce le ragioni della rilevanza del tema dell’analogia, come oggetto utilizzato e pensato nei secoli medievali e come strumento di ricerca storiografica, e infine si conclude con l’articolazione del fascicolo. The introduction to the issue Analogy (...) and the Middle Ages sive twenty years of analogies presents issue n. 18 of Doctor Virtualis and traces the milestones of the journal. It first sketches some lines of the history of the journal and its main theoretical and historiographical inspirations, then highlights the reasons for the relevance of the theme of analogy, as an object used and thought of in the medieval centuries and as a tool for historiographical research, and finally concludes with the articulation of the issue. (shrink)

I provide and defend two natural accounts of fundamentality for facts that do justice to the idea that the “degree of fundamentality” enjoyed by a fact is a matter of how far, from a ground-theoretic perspective, the fact is from the ungrounded facts.

Ce texte a pour but de mettre en confrontation la conception ruyérienne de la philosophie avec la conception wittgensteinienne. L’opposition majeure consiste dans l’idée défendue par Ruyer selon laquelle on ne saurait concevoir ce qu’est l’esprit sans définir un domaine, intérieur au sujet, qu’on peut identifier avec sa subjectivité. Une telle idée est comprise par Ryle comme un mythe, celui de l’intériorité. Il y a en revanche une volonté commune (mais bien différente) à Ruyer et Wittgenstein de s’émanciper de la (...) science. Deux thèmes permettent alors de comparer les objectifs de Ruyer et ceux des philosophes wittgensteiniens : le thème des mythes en philosophie et celui de la traduction. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers are attracted by the Indispensability Claim, according to which emotions are indispensable in acquiring knowledge of some important values. The truth of this claim is often thought to depend on that of Emotional Dogmatism, the view that emotions justify evaluative judgements because they (seem to) make us aware of the relevant values. The aim of this paper is to show that the Indispensability Claim does not stand or fall with Emotional Dogmatism and that there is actually an attractive (...) alternative way of developing it. We first argue that the Indispensability Claim requires a deflationary account of the cognitive bases of emotions, which we call the Simple View and defend against a variety of criticisms. Armed with the Simple View, we show that the Indispensability Claim is made true by three roles of the emotions: they help us access the relevant evidence, provide a needed hook-up between evidence and judgement, and contribute to evaluative understanding. (shrink)

How does metaphysical grounding interact with the truth-functions? I argue that the answer varies according to whether one has a worldly conception or a conceptual conception of grounding. I then put forward a logic of worldly grounding and give it an adequate semantic characterisation.

Fabrice Virgili (Q) : Elisabeth Elgán, comme historienne des mouvements sociaux et du féminisme suédois dans les années 1970, vous avez bien voulu à l’occasion du 2e Congrès de l’Institut du genre qui s’est réuni à Angers à la fin août 2019 revenir sur le #MeToo en Suède. Pouvez-vous d’abord nous rappeler dans quel contexte apparaît ce #? Elisabeth Elgán (EE) : Il est encore un peu tôt pour avoir des recherches approfondies sur ce mouvement, il s’agit donc d’une (...) réflexion fondée sur mes prop... (shrink)

This contribution reviews the main normative and positive arguments that can used in the assessment of the costs and benefits of food marketing restrictions, focusing specifically on theoretical and empirical developments in the economics of advertising, consumer behaviour and industrial organization since the 70s.

This chapter focuses on fundamental trends in the philosophy of emotion since the publication of William James’ seminal and contentious view. James is famous for his claim that undergoing an emotion comes down to feeling (psychological mode) specific changes within the body (content). Philosophers writing after him have also attempted to analyse emotional modes in terms of other psychological modes (believing, desiring, and perceiving) and to adjust their contents accordingly. The discussion is organized around a series of contrasts that have (...) played fundamental roles in shaping these approaches to the emotions. These contrasts are those between emotions and feelings, between specific and unspecific phenomenology, and between dependent and independent modes. Focus on these contrasts enables a review of some dramatic turning points in the recent history of theorizing about the emotions; it also serves to bring to light fundamental constraints bearing on emotion theory. (shrink)

I offer and defend an account of real definitions. I put forward two versions of the account, one formulated in terms of the notion of generalised identity and of a suitable notion of grounding, and the other one formulated in terms of the former notion and of a suitable notion of comparative joint-carvingness. Given a plausible assumption, and turn out to be equivalent. I give a sketch of a unified account of the three notions involved in and from which the (...) assumption can be derived. (shrink)

The fiduciary nature of the patient-physician relationship requires clinicians to act in the best interest of their patients. Patients are vulnerable due to their health status and lack of medical knowledge, which makes them dependent on the clinicians’ expertise. Competent patients, however, may reject the recommendations of their physician, either refusing beneficial medical interventions or procedures based on their personal views that do not match the perceived medical indication. In some instances, the patients’ refusal may jeopardize their health or life (...) but also compromise the clinician’s moral responsibility to promote the patient’s best interests. In other words, health professionals have to deal with patients whose behavior and healthcare decisions seem counterproductive for their health, or even deteriorate it, because of lack of knowledge, bad habits or bias without being the patients’ free voluntary choice. The moral dilemma centers on issues surrounding the limits of the patient’s autonomy (rights) and the clinician’s role to promote the well-being of the patient (duties). In this paper we argue that (1) the use of manipulative strategies, albeit considered beneficent, defeats the purpose of patient education and therefore should be rejected; and (2) the appropriate strategy is to empower patients through patient education which enhances their autonomy and encourages them to become full healthcare partners as opposed to objects of clinical intervention or entities whose values or attitudes need to be shaped and changed through education. First, we provide a working definition of the concept of patient education and a brief historical overview of its origin. Second, we examine the nature of the patient-physician relationship in order to delineate its boundaries, essential for understanding the role of education in the clinical context. Third, we argue that patient education should promote self-rebiasing, enhance autonomy, and empower patients to determine their therapeutic goals. Finally, we develop a moral framework for patient education. (shrink)

Danielle Macbeth's purpose in Macbeth 2005 is threefold. Her monograph proposes "to provide a logical justification for all aspects of Frege's peculiar notation, to motivate and explain the developments in Frege's views over the course of his intellectual life, and to explicate his most developed, critically reflective conception of his Begriffschrift, his formula language of pure thought" (p. vii). I shall focus here on a few selected aspects of the first and third points and leave on the side the discussion (...) of the historical development of Frege's views on logic, semantics and mathematics. The book's underlying claim is that although Frege's logical language, "can of course be read as a language of quantificational logic, [it] can also be read very differently" (p. vii), so much so, as a matter of fact, that although Frege's logic is usually thought of as a "notational variant of standard quantificational logic", it is nevertheless "unknown to us" (p. 1). This naturally prompts three questions : "What is Frege's logic?", "What is quantificational logic?", and given the way we understand formal languages for first and higher order predicate logic, most notably the notions of argument 2 place (for a predicate symbol), of scope and of binding (of variables - either individual or predicate of first or higher order): "How come Frege's logic says nothing about such notions, or something so different from what we say?". (shrink)

Professor Prawitz has made four claims in his talk. The first claim is that one should be able to generalize the intuitionistic theory of meaning already available for mathematical discourse to empirical discourse. Since each claim constitutes a step in an argument of a general form in favour of some new kind of antirealistically inclined theory of meaning (with a final pessimistic overtone), I shall go over each claim one by one, check whether the argument which links them in the (...) way described is sound, and assess on that basis the appropriateness of the project (and of the pessimism). (shrink)

Anti-realists about the past claim that no one has yet manifested a knowledge of the truth of tensed instances of the realist schema '‡,' instances such as '‡. It is true that we cannot decide specific instances of the realist schema and that, consequently, neither our understanding of these instances, nor our knowledge of their truth may be constituted by the recognitional and executive capacities which, according to Michael Dummett's antirealism, constitute grasp of meaning. Although we cannot decide these issues, (...) we can meet Dummett's anti-realist's manifestability challenge by arguing for them from contingency. While no recognitional and decisional skills may constitute our knowledge that their truth-conditions are satisfied, we can, without begging the question, derive that knowledge from our folk and scientific theories of the workings of nature. The evidence we have in favor of the fact that evidential relations between us and past facts are naturally contingent allows us to infer tensed instances of the fundamental realist modal claim. The joint possibility of truth and undecideability pro tempora is a natural possibility and, thereby, a logical and metaphysical possibility. (shrink)