In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A NOTE ON THE RELATION OF PACIFISM AND JUST-WAR THEORY: IS THERE A THOMISTIC CONVERGENCE? 1 GABRIEL PALMER-FERNANDEZ Youngstown State University Youngstown, Ohio FOR CENTURIES, the moral analysis of war began with a consideration of a set of principles which together form the doctrine of the just-war and with a rejection of pacifism. However, several recent studies by Catholic moralists argue that pacifism and just-war theory (...) have much in common and converge in at least one morally important way-namely, they share a presumption against violence. In this note I want to consider whether or not classical just-war theory gives us reason to accept this claim. I will give evidence against it, and suggest that the "original just-war question," as James Turner Johnson calls it, does not begin with aprohibitive presumption or some equivalent constraint on action. If we are to speak of a presumption in classical just-war theory, it is that justice be done for the sake of the common good. Up to very recent times, those Christian denominations which Ernst Troeltsch called the "church-type" (Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinist, and Roman Catholic) upheld a " two-tiered " or "double" morality. A "vocational" pacifism was required of clerical ranks, and the individual Christian was obligated to take up arms for the sake of the common good. For example, prior to the Second Vatican Council, Roman Catholic teaching on war rejected conscientious objection to all war (i.e., pacifism) as an option for Catholics. Manuals of moral theology prior to Vatican 1 I wish to acknowledge the very helpful and detailed comments provided by Richard B. Miller to an earlier version of this paper. 247 248 GABRIEL PALMER-FERNANDEZ II did prohibit the soldier from fighting in an unjust war and made room for subjective doubt about the justice of a particular war. But the consensus among Catholic theologians was both wide and deep. Pacifism for individual Christians did not have any moral-theological justification. It was, in fact, a grave moral error. In spite of this, Vatican II called for a " completely fresh reappraisal of war." 2 The policy of obliterating whole cities enacted during World War II, coupled with the development of nuclear and other indiscriminate weapons of destruction (e.g., incapacitating gases, biological weapons, etc.) and the instability of superpower relations, created an unprecedented condition for which traditional teachings on war seemed woefully inadequate, if not morally dangerous. A new, more far-reaching perspective was needed. And this was to allow for individuals the pacifist option as a second and complementary moral doctrine alongside traditional teaching on war.3 As the American Catholic bishops said in their pastoral letter on war and peace : 2 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, in A. Flannery, 0.P., ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Collegeville, Minn. : Liturgical Press, 1975), par. 80. 3 This development in contemporary Roman Catholic teaching on war and peace has been challenged with considerable force by George Weigel in what has become one of the most controversial studies on the subject. In Tranquillitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), Weigel advances several arguments which are meant to correct what he insists is a failure among Catholic ethicists in the U.S. to develop their tradition, and, indeed, an abandonment of their heritage. " At the level of moral theory," Weigel maintains, "the two classic positions [just-war theory and pacifism] are not reconcilable. The attempt to merge them... tends to corrupt both traditions. Pacifists end up making judgments on military strategy and tactics, and just-war theorists are held accountable to arguments they previously declined to accept.... The net result is to bifurcate morality and politics, and to abandon attempts to apply the tradition of reason to the limit case of the use of armed force in the defense of values-which is precisely the result Murray most feared in his strictures against moralism" (251). For David Hollenbach's rebuttal, see his review essay, "War and Peace in American Catholic Thought: A Heritage Abandoned? " Theological Studies 48 (1987) : 711-727... (shrink)

Just war morality draws an important distinction between soldiers and civilians. Unlike soldiers, civilians may never be intentionally killed because they are innocent. But the prohibition on intentionally killing civilians cannot be adequately explained by the wrongness of killing the innocent. This paper examines several views on the meaning of innocence in war, exposes difficulties with each that warrant their rejection, and proposes an alternative view on the wrongness of killing civilians that is independent of the wrongness of killing the (...) innocent. It concludes by noting some concerns with the proposed alternative. (shrink)

This essay discusses four recent books on the Western, and one book on the classical Chinese, traditions of just war. It concentrates on the jus ad bellum moral criteria, giving attention to the centrality of the state in just war morality, to some challenges in reconceptualizing the jus ad bellum in the context of non-state agents, and to controversies over a “presumption against war.”.

Introduction to the World Government /World Governance symposium.

This volume consists of fourteen chapters selected from papers presented at the conference 'Ethics, Medicine and Health Care: An Appraisal of the Thought of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.' along with a response to those chapters by Engelhardt and a Foreword by Laurence B. McCullough. The chapters direct primary attention to various aspects of Engelhardt's philosophy of medicine and bioethics as presented in The Foundations of Bioethics and Bioethics and Secular Humanism: The Search for a Common Morality. Among the topics treated (...) are the economics of health care and the medical profession, the libertarian and communitarian aspects of Engelhardt's thought, the moral status of children, abortion, the moral foundations for a health care system, feminism and clinical epistemology, and the relation between secular and religious moralities. In response to the various challenges posed by the authors, Engelhardt considers the implications of the failure of the modern philosophical project, the role of reason in ethics, and the resolution of conflict among communities that do not share the same moral vision. The book will be of interest to professionals in medicine, philosophy, theology, health policy, and law, and to graduate students in those disciplines. (shrink)

The essays in this book engage the original and controversial claims from Michael Boylan's A Just Society. Each essay discusses Boylan's claims from a particular chapter and offers a critical analysis of these claims. Boylan responds to the essays in his lengthy and philosophically rich reply.

Among the various issues in Global Justice that I address in Morality and Global Justice: Justifications and Applications (2011-a), international immigration is one of the most important. Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez and Julie Kirsch have written sensitive queries about my position that I will address in order.

This essay explores some concerns about the quality of informed consent in patients whose autonomy is diminished by fatal illness. It argues that patients with diminished autonomy cannot give free and voluntary consent, and that recruitment of such patients as subjects in human experimentation exploits their vulnerability in a morally objectionable way. Two options are given to overcome this objection: (i) recruit only those patients who desire to contribute to medical knowledge, rather than gain access to experimental treatment, or (ii) (...) provide prospective subjects the choice to participate in standard doubleblind study or receive the experimental treatment. Either option would guarantee that patients in desperate conditions are given a more meaningful choice and a richer freedom, and thus a higher quality of informed consent, than under standard randomized trials. (shrink)

Desde el Renacimiento, la utopía ha cumplido una función crítica con respecto al orden social establecido. La representación imaginativa de una sociedad perfecta se construye sobre la constatación de la injusticia de la realidad presente. Por oposición, la ideología, como representación que da identidad a una sociedad, desempeña la función de justificación del orden establecido. Ambas -utopía e ideología-, en su deformación, se oponen y se excluyen mutuamente, en tanto que evasión de la realidad o encubrimiento de la injusticia. En (...) su dimensión positiva, son complementarias. El problema que se plantea es si es posible, en nuestro tiempo, recuperar el impulso transformador que llevó al pensamiento utópico en la Modernidad a aspirar a una sociedad mundial más justa. (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende analizar críticamente la interpretación llevada a cabo por Étienne Balibar en relación con las tres antinomias de la igualibertad descritas en su obra, así como con las definiciones balibarianas de «ciudadanía social», «Constitución material» y «co-ciudadanía». Para ello, se hará un recorrido por el pensamiento del filósofo a través de su obra La igualibertad. A continuación, se confrontarán algunas de sus tesis con el propósito de mostrar sus límites internos a través de la filosofía del derecho mediante (...) la obra de Luigi Ferrajoli. Para terminar, se propone la propuesta de constitucionalismo garantista de Ferrajoli como posible superación de las antinomias planteadas por Balibar acerca de la igualibertad. (shrink)

Toda moral centrada en el deber sin ninguna integración personal y responsable, puede ser el origen de un sentido de culpabilidad que dificulte cualquier proyecto de corrección. La recuperación de la idea de ética como camino a la realización personal, la consideración de la ética como ''vida buena'' para personas comprometidas con la justicia, nos permitirá entender la ética como una vía para alcanzar el equilibrio de las relaciones personales consigo mismas, otras cosas y las personas.

La vida y obra de José Luis Aranguren siguen siendo válidas no sólo desde el punto de vista del pensamiento ético, sino también de la toma de conciencia del papel de los laicos en la Iglesia. La utilización por Aranguren de las ideas filosóficas de Zubiri para el estudio de la ética es una de las aportaciones más relevantes del pensamiento contemporáneo. A Aranguren hay que reconocerle la persistente relevancia que la Filosofía Moral tiene en nuestra tradición cultural.

Despite the prominent role that technology plays in twenty‐first‐century societies, the intersections between spirituality and technology have been poorly analyzed. This article develops a cross‐reflection between these two key anthropological aspects, using a philosophical approach that structures the analysis along three classical categories: transcendence, immanence, and relationality. Drawing from ideas of philosophers, such as Heidegger and Merleau‐Ponty, the article sheds light on problematic aspects of technology that spirituality helps identify and for which it suggests solutions. Symmetrically, the analysis shows commonly (...) inadvertent aspects of spirituality that technology brings to the fore. All in all, spirituality appears as an essential dimension to cultivate in technological societies, while technology might reveal spirituality as richer and deeper than has been apparent in traditional settings. (shrink)

The European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) is a groundbreaking regulatory framework that integrates technical concepts and terminology from the rapidly evolving ecosystems of AI research and innovation into the legal domain. Precise definitions accessible to both AI experts and lawyers are crucial for the legislation to be effective. This paper provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the concepts of AI system, general purpose AI system, foundation model and generative AI across the different versions of the legal text (Commission proposal, (...) Parliament position and Council General Approach) before the final political agreement. The goal is to help bridge the understanding of these key terms between the technical and legal communities and contribute to a proper implementation of the AI Act. We provide an analysis of the concept of AI system considering its scientific foundation and the crucial role that it plays in the regulation, which requires a sound definition both from legal and technical standpoints. We connect the outcomes of this discussion with the analysis of the concept of general purpose AI system and its evolution during the negotiations. We also address the distinct conceptual meanings of AI system vs AI model and explore the technical nuances of the term foundation model. We conclude that rooting the definition of foundation model to its general purpose capabilities following standardised evaluation methodologies appears to be most appropriate approach. Lastly, we tackle the concept of generative AI, arguing that definitions of AI system that include “content” as one of the system’s outputs already captures it, and concluding that not all generative AI is based on foundation models. (shrink)

This paper proposes to consider the question “What kind of other can an AI be for a human?”, to analyse a set of ethical and societal challenges associated with a hypothetical massive deployment of “AIs as others” in society (social robots, artificial companions, chatbots with relational purposes such as friendship or romantic partnership, etc.). The proposed answer is that six features characterize “AIs as others”: serviceable, commodified, surveillant, authoritative, techno-standardized, and interiority-less. The implications of each feature are explored in depth, (...) proposing three possible future scenarios (confusion, degradation, transformation), of which only the transformation scenario would be ethically acceptable. Through this analysis, a central thesis is developed, namely, that one of the main challenges of the transformation that “AIs as others” may catalyse is the adequate understanding of the otherness of AIs in relationship to humans. The conclusion is that for society to develop this adequate understanding, a new kind of “other” must be constructed, tailored to the characteristics of “AIs as others”. For it, a new term will be required (it is proposed “analytical other” [AO]), along with a suitable ontological status and a set of admissible roles. This socio-cultural creation of a new kind of other will require a transformation, a more mature and nuanced sense of otherness. The paper concludes by giving some recommendations to bring forth this transformation and proposing some questions and hypotheses that may inspire further research. (shrink)

Gianni Vattimo's Non-religious Christianity. Weakening of being, secularization and divine kenosis.

After the collapse of the Hegelian philosophy, many thinkers returned to the main principles of Kantian transcendentalism. In this way, they initiated the neo-kantian movement. Wilhelm Dilthey was among them. Nevertheless, only in spirit can his “Critique of the Historical Reason” be called neo-kantian. In fact, the core of Dilthey’s project, the “Categories of Life”, is a completely new gnoseological proposal, that mediates between transcendental philosophy and empiricism.

In order to create a post-neoliberal society we need to change the way we look at the world. This article begins by considering the lesson learned in the case of “Mont Pèlerin,” where ideas that th...

An essential requirement for increasing human confidence in computer systems is knowing an event’s origin. Therefore, it is necessary to have an efficient method to record such information. It is especially challenging in robotics, where unexpected behaviours can have unpredictable consequences, endangering the interests of people or even their safety. Furthermore, to analyse an incident’s cause or anticipate future behaviours, we must identify the events that cause a specific action. Although it is common to use logging systems for such purposes, (...) issues such as partial recording of events, unhelpful data or the impact on robot performance suggest conceiving new accountability solutions that assist when determining the responsible entities or the provenance of specific information. This paper presents a general-purpose approach to developing an accountability system for autonomous robots. It consists of four main components: a system event logger, a message producer, a distributed event streaming platform and a database. Our proposal is completely decoupled from the monitored system and allows real-time analysis, improving flexibility, besides system protection and transparency. Finally, the need to reduce the impact of the audit process and logging tasks on robot performance has promoted the development of different assessment scenarios to determine the best strategy for providing accounting services. (shrink)

El presente artículo recoge una conferencia inédita. Por un lado, el autor se centra en examinar los usos impropios de la noción de dialéctica, rechazando su concepción como lógica alternativa a la formal, como ciencia o como método en un sentido estricto. Por otro lado, muestra una caracterización de la dialéctica como una «metódica» en sentido amplio que se propone captar totalidades concretas en su despliegue desde un punto de vista materialista, histórico y crítico, con finalidades emancipatorias, cuya cientificidad sólo (...) podría admitirse si se entiende en un sentido subordinado. (shrink)

In this work, we shall study structural abduction and how ways of searching for solutions to the corresponding abductive problems could be modeled. Specifically, we shall define modal semantic tableaux for normal modal systems and study its applications to structural abduction. This method even makes structural abduction clearer and, as it shall be seen, when a radical change of logic is epistemologically required, the corresponding tableau will have pertinent information to suggest it.

To cope with the intersubjective and communicative deficiencies of Heidegger's Analytics of Existence, Hans-Georg Gadamer developed a theory of language whose nature is at one time phenomenological and ontological. Inspired by Plato's dialectics and Aristotle's ethical and rhetorical works, Gadamer sees human linguistic capabilities as the defining trait of all that is human. Language lives in conversation, dialogically structuring all social and cultural relations. Language is the ambit in which human beings and their historical world take place. In Gadamer's thought, (...) logos replaces being as the ontological support. In such a way, Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy seeks to fill the void opened by the 20th Century deconstruction of Metaphysics. (shrink)

The Modern concept of truth, which subjects truth to certainty, broke the harmonious relation between reality and truth, that prevailed in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Hans-Georg Gadamer thinks that the main task of contemporary Philosophy is to recover the original harmony of being and knowledge. To shed light on the nature of this problem, we expound the metaphysical-theological foundation of truth, which is at the roots of Aristotelian and Thomistic Philosophies. Specifically, we analyze here the relation between being, truth and (...) logos in the Aristotelian treatise Perì Hermeneías, and in its Thomistic commentary. (shrink)