Many authors in the field of Environmental Philosophy have claimed to be inspired by Spinoza's monism, which has traditionally been considered a form of pantheism because nature and God coincide. This idea has deep normative implications, as some environmental ethicists claim that wounding nature is the same as wounding God, which implies a resacralization of nature. In particular, we will focus on Arne Næss's Ecosophy (or Deep Ecology) to offer a current relevant example of the pantheist (or panentheist) worldview. However, (...) a new demarcation distinguishes pantheism from panentheism; in the latter, nature and God belong together but do not fully coincide, as in pantheism. Nevertheless, whether Spinoza is a panentheist, pantheist, or neither has yet to be fully determined, as well as whether his doctrine serves as a proper foundation for an ecology that attempts the aforementioned resacralization of nature. This article attempts to clarify these issues. (shrink)

Environmental ethics is often seen as a branch of applied ethics whose task is to offer solutions to emerging ethical dilemmas in the context of ecology. In this paper, we challenge this assumption, showing how the object of environmental ethics raises questions that go beyond that of applied ethics. We explore how the environmental issues bring up the need to inquire into the ontological status of Nature and the place of human beings in it, raising more general and far-reaching questions (...) that do not get entrapped in the mere application. In this regard, it appears that “dwelling”, in its ontological sense, is at the bottom of these questions, creating a bridge between the ontological and the practical realm. Finally, we review classical environmental ethics’ paradigms highlighting the elements that go beyond applied ethics. And so, taking into account the different environmental ethics paradigms, we have two options: reducing the scope of the discipline and exclude the models that exceed it, or reconsidering it as an environmental philosophy tout court. (shrink)

El artista menorquín Pascual Calbó Caldés, autor de una enciclopedia científica que ha llegado hasta nosotros con el nombre de Obras didácticas, pintó en el salón de la Casa Vidal una cenefa en la que aparecen representaciones alegóricas de la escultura, pintura, arquitectura, astronomía, música, literatura, matemáticas y agricultura. En este artículo mostramos algunos detalles relativos a las alegorías de las matemáticas y la astronomía que pueden escapar al ojo del observador común. Palabras clave: Pascual Calbó, Matemáticas, Pintura, Menorca, (...) Siglo XVIII. ABSTRACT The artist from Menorca Pascual Calbó Caldés, author of a scientific encyclopedia which has been preserved under the title of Obras didácticas, painted in the living room of the Casa Vidal a frieze in which we can find allegorical representations of sculpture, painting, architecture, music, literature, mathematics and agriculture. In this paper, we present some details regarding the allegories of mathematics and astronomy that may scape the eye of the common observer. Keywords: Pascual Calbó, Mathematics, Painting, Minorca, 18th century. (shrink)

Health professionals are especially exposed to stress, with consequences on professionals’ health and wellbeing. However, palliative care professionals’ wellbeing has been the subject of very little research. The aim of this work is to study the Personal Wellbeing Index in a sample of Spanish palliative care professionals, as well as to study their levels of wellbeing and the relationships of wellbeing with variables such as gender, age, marital status, profession, and professional quality of life. A cross-sectional survey of Spanish palliative (...) care professionals was conducted. The Spanish version of the PWI and the Short version of the Professional Quality of Life Scale were used. Here, 296 palliative care professionals attending patients at the end of life participated in the study. They showed medium to high levels of wellbeing. The PWI showed an adequate internal structure [χ2 = 116.130 ]; Comparative Fit Index = 0.970; standardized root mean square residual = 0.041; root mean square error of approximation = 0.140 ] and excellent estimates of reliability [α = 0.879 and Composite Reliability Index = 0.923]. Wellbeing was higher for married compared to single and showed no relation with age, gender, and profession. Additionally, a structural equation model was estimated, in which a positive relation was found between wellbeing and compassion satisfaction and a negative one with burnout. The PWI is adequate to measure personal wellbeing in Spanish palliative care professionals. (shrink)

Several philosophers have argued recently that semantic properties do play a causal role. 1 It is our view that none of these arguments are satisfactory. Our aim is to reveal some of the deficiencies of these arguments, and to reassess the question in our own way. In section 1, we shall explain in more detail what is involved in the pretheoretical idea of a causally efficacious property and so provide a fuller sense of the issue. In section 2 we shall (...) discuss Fodor's and Kim's arguments that the semantic properties of mental events are causally efficacious. Their tactic is to articulate sufficient conditions for the causal efficacy of a property, and then apply these conditions to the psychological properties under consideration. We shall show that both formulations are inadequate. However, each account can remedy some of the defects of the other. We shall argue that by putting the two together, and modifying this combined account in certain ways, we can arrive at something that might just pass as a general sufficient condition for causal efficacy. We believe that the question of causal efficacy of content is best approached as a question in the philosophy of science. If one wants to know whether a given species of property is efficacious, the most productive strategy is to find a science that investigates the properties and examine the role they are assigned. In keeping with this attitude we shall restrict our discussion to the notion of content deployed within cognitive science. In section 3 we examine the role of content in cognitive science and discuss whether this role suits content to the conditions on efficacy articulated in section two. Our conclusion will be conditional and hedged: on certain views of cognitive science, content will meet the sufficient condition for efficacy. If other views are correct, the question remains open. (shrink)

This essay argues for a model of pictorial representation which aims to explain the relationship between pictorial content and pictorial accuracy. Focusing on cases where pictures are intended to convey accurate information, the model distinguishes between two fundamental representational relations: on one hand, a picture expresses a content; on the other, it aims at a target scene. Such a picture is accurate when the content it expresses fits the target scene it aims at. In addition, the model follows the traditional (...) division of content into two aspects: singular content specifies the particular individuals which a picture is of, and attributive content specifies the properties and relations which the picture ascribes to those individuals. For a picture to be accurate, both aspects must be matched in the target. I call this the Three-Part Model because it distinguishes between the triad of factors, singular content, attributive content, and target, which together determine pictorial accuracy. Though previous work on depiction has not recognized the distinctive role played by target, I will argue that it is essential in order to make sense of accuracy judgements across a range of central cases. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: To Kalon as Effective Teleological Order The Visibility of the Fine Pleasure and Praise The Value of the Fine Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes References Further reading.

El Estado de Hegel es el Estado de Derecho. Sin embargo en su Filosofía del Derecho se encuentran fundamentos decisivos para una teoría del Estado Social. Siguiendo el hilo de las Líneas fundamentales de la Filosofía del Derecho, se empieza por ver el derecho al bienestar, tal como se formula en la Moralidad (1). En la familia aparece el derecho de los hijos "de ser alimentados y educados" (2). El Derecho al bienestar se concreta en la sociedad civil (3), se (...) hace posible en el sistema de las necesidades (3.1.) y efectivo en la policía y la corporación (3.2 y 3.3), que ejercen funciones de suplencia de la familia. El mayor problema es la pobreza, tanto la que surge por contingencias subjetivas y sociales como por el funcionamiento mismo de la sociedad civil: la plebe. A este problema la sociedad es incapaz de darle una solución. (shrink)

Apologizing for Socrates places some of the Platonic and Xenophontic writings in the context of contemporary controversies over Socrates, providing a perspective in which many of the philosophic and literary features of the text can be explained. In addition, it sheds light on the apologetic techniques used by Plato and Xenophon.

The history of the field of business ethics in the U.S. remains understudied and misunderstood. In this article I begin to remedy this oversight about the past, and I suggest how it can be beneficial in the present. Using both published and unpublished primary sources, I argue that the business ethics field emerged in the early twentieth century, against the backdrop of the establishment of business schools in major universities. I bring to light four important developments: business ethics lectures at (...) the University of California and Yale University, Leon Marshall’s curriculum at the College of Commerce of the University of Chicago, and the William A. Vawter Foundation on Business Ethics at Northwestern University. Then, I consider the payoffs of my historical account for business ethics theory, pedagogy, and practice. Specifically, I present four implications of my account under these headings: business ethics as a public problem; the place of ethics in business schools; historicizing business ethics; and historical self-knowledge. (shrink)

The so-called Trolley Problem was first discussed by Philippa Foot in 1967 as a way to test moral intuitions regarding the doctrine of double effect, Kantian principles and utilitarianism. Ever since, a great number of philosophers and psychologists have come up with alternative scenarios to further test intuitions and the relevance of conventional moral doctrines. Given that physicians routinely face moral decisions regarding life and death, the Trolley Problem should be considered of great importance in medical ethics. In this article, (...) five “classic” trolley scenarios are discussed: the driver diverting the trolley, a bystander pulling a lever to divert the trolley, a fat man being thrown from a bridge to stop the trolley, a bystander pulling a lever to divert a trolley so that a fat man may be run over, and a bystander pulling a lever so that a fat man falls off from a bridge to stop the trolley. As these scenarios are discussed, relevant moral differences amongst them are addressed, and some of the applications in medical ethics are discussed. The article concludes that Trolley scenarios are not the ultimate criterion to make ethical decisions in difficult ethical challenges in medicine cases but they do serve as an initial intuitive guide. (shrink)

In recent years, it has been acknowledged increasingly that the relationship between analytic and continental philosophy is one of complementarity rather than opposition, as previously often assumed. In this essay I will argue that, in fact, early analytic philosophy has its roots in the tradition of continental philosophy. The essay will focus on Hermann Lotze's influence on Frege and on Frege's relationship to the Neo‐Kantians Otto Liebmann and Wilhelm Windelband. It will provide new evidence for the claim that Frege's philosophy (...) should be seen as belonging to the tradition of Neo‐Kantianism and, along the way, exhibit the continental roots of Frege's context principle. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Good Conceived as an End The Good as a Convergent End The Meaning of “Eudaimonia” Happiness vs. the Happy Life The Finality Criterion The Self‐sufficiency Criterion Inclusivism The Shape of the Happy Life Concluding Remarks Notes Bibliography.

We argue that not all cases of before-effect involve causation and ask how to demarcate cases of before-effect in which the events that follow exert causal influence over the before-effect from cases in which they do not.

This paper interprets the relation between sovereignty and guilt in Nietzsche's Genealogy. I argue that, contrary to received opinion, Nietzsche was not opposed to the moral concept of guilt. I analyse Nietzsche's account of the emergence of the guilty conscience out of a pre-moral bad conscience. Drawing attention to Nietzsche's references to many different forms of conscience and analogizing to his account of punishment, I propose that we distinguish between the enduring and the fluid elements of a ‘conscience’, defining the (...) enduring element as the practice of forming self-conceptions. I show that for Nietzsche, the moralization of the bad conscience results from mixing it with the material concepts of guilt and duty, a process effected by prehistoric religious institutions by way of the concept of god. This moralization furnishes a new conception of oneself as a responsible agent and holds the promise of sovereignty by giving us a freedom unknown to other creatures, but at the price of our becoming subject to moral guilt. According to Nietzsche, however, the very forces that made it possible have spoiled this promise and, under the pressures of the ascetic ideal, a harmful notion of responsibility understood in terms of sin now dominates our lives. Thus, to fully realize our sovereignty, we must liberate ourselves from this sinful conscience. (shrink)

This paper tries to link Ethology to Biosemiotics by analysing the similarities between some triadic relationships like biosemiotics’ Object—Representamen—Interpretant and the one established in Ethology between Sign-stimuli— Innate Releasing Mechanism—Modal Action Pattern, or the one potentially established in communication networks comprising Sender—Receiver—Eavesdropper. I argue here that a collaborative relationship is supported by the fact that the observational method used by Ethology is based on the triadic relationship Sender—Receiver—Eavesdropper. This method, by introducing the human observer at the Interpreter/Eavesdropper place, is not (...) only applicable to the direct study of animal communication, but also to the interpretation of all other animal behaviour by assuming that behaviour is a sign/signal system on its own, for us to interpret and decode. (shrink)

Schelling entwirft in seiner Spätphilosophie einen neuen Philosophietypus, der in Konkurrenz zu Hegels Metaphysik tritt. Dabei greift er Hegel nicht nur auf dem Gebiet fundamentaler theoretischen Annahmen an, sondern sucht ihn insbesondere durch einen neuen Begriff von Religion zu überbieten. Die Arbeit untersucht dies im Ausgang von Schellings "Philosophie der Mythologie".

In this essay I consider the relationship between Heidegger’s famous “turn” and realism. I begin with Heidegger’s critique of the problem of an external world, and I describe how this critique anticipates New Realism. I then provide a reconstruction of Heidegger’s self-critique of Being and Time, showing how this work exhibits a higher-order antirealism. Next, I show how Heidegger’s turn is motivated by the inadequacy of this earlier anti-realism. In his philosophy of the event he moves towards a realist ontology (...) by developing concepts such as “destiny”, which he understands to be independent of human attitudes. Nevertheless, Heidegger ultimately falls back into an anti-realism, because Being still remains dependent upon the involvement of human beings. I therefore conclude this essay by briefly arguing for my own version of New Realism, according to which objects are meaningful in a way that is independent of our attitudes towards them. (shrink)

Journal Name: SATS Issue: Ahead of print.

The Ultrapower Axiom is an abstract combinatorial principle inspired by the fine structure of canonical inner models of large cardinal axioms. In this paper, it is established that the Ultrapower A...

The European Commission produces the European Core Health Indicators, a database containing different tools used to compare European Union countries and recommend policy changes. The ECHI feeds multiple reports and documents and finds its way into health policies. From this arises the main research question addressed in this paper: How is health in Europe influenced by ECHI data practices? Specifically, we look at how some health issues or populations are prioritized or dismissed, which ultimately shapes the meaning of and knowledge (...) about health in Europe. To do so, we first develop the conceptual framework of “data performativity,” underlining how data practices shape their object/subject. We then explore the politics of evidence behind the ECHI health data that materialize into the absence of some health issues and populations and the hypervisibility of neoliberal health. In the end, we argue, the ECHI serves as a site of individual, collective, and political identity enunciation. (shrink)

We develop “local NIP group theory” in the context of pseudofinite groups. In particular, given a sufficiently saturated pseudofinite structure G expanding a group, and left invariant NIP formula δ...

Michael Walzer’s article ‘Political action: the problem of dirty hands’ initiated a new wave of discussion over a persistent problem in moral philosophy: are there situations in which ethical rules must be relaxed so as to bring about a greater good? In this article, we consider whether this ‘dirty hands’ approach may be applied to our current climate crisis. One proposed solution to the problem of global warming is the administration of moral enhancements to the population. Assuming that the administration (...) of moral enhancements is a necessary condition in the prevention of a climate crisis, Parker Crutchfield argues that this procedure ought to be covert. This implies lying to the public, and such dishonesty amounts to immoral behavior. We conclude that despite the severity of global warming, there is no justification for a dirty hands approach. Lying to the public in order to save the planet would probably create bigger problems, and it would ultimately be very counterproductive in trying to save the planet. (shrink)

Die Stellung der Philosophie zwischen Wissenschaft und Dichtung kommt in mannigfachen Formen zwischen Gedicht und Lehrbuchform zum Ausdruck. Die hier versammelten Beiträge gehen den Gründen für diese unterschiedlichen Darstellungsformen nach und zeigen deren methodische Bedeutung.

Monogamy in Western countries has recently undergone criticisms, because it is perceived as an oppressive institution, adjacent to reactionary cultural values. In this article, I argue that monogamy is in fact a force of social progress and women’s empowerment. I point out that, given our natural tendencies, the most likely alternative to monogamy is polygyny. By its very nature, polygyny faces a numerical difficulty, to the extent that (given the equitable male to female ratio) when one man engages in romantic (...) or sexual relationships with multiple female partners, inequality and social conflict ensues. I present historical and sociological data that sustains the argument that polygyny is associated with greater inequality, violence, poverty and women’s vulnerability. Nevertheless, while monogamy can be considered a force of social progress, I argue that the State is not morally entitled to prosecute non-monogamous lifestyles, but there may still be non-coercive ways to promote monogamy. (shrink)

Progress in neuroscience has left a central question of psychism unanswered: what is consciousness? Modeling the psyche from a computational perspective has helped to develop cognitive neurosciences, but it has also shown their limits, of which the definition, description and functioning of consciousness remain essential. From Rene Descartes, who tackled the issue of psychism as the brain-mind dualism, to Chambers, who defined qualia as the tough, difficult problem of research in neuroscience, many hypotheses and theories have been issued to encompass (...) the phenomenon of consciousness. Neuroscience specialists, such as Giulio Tononi or David Eagleman, consider consciousness as a phenomenon of emergence of all processes that take place in the brain. This hypothesis has the advantage of being supported by progress made in the study of complex systems in which the issue of emergence can be mathematically formalized and analyzed by physical-mathematical models. The current tendency to associate neural networks within the broad scope of network science also allows for a physical-mathematical formalization of phenomenology in neural networks and the construction of information-symbolic models. The extrapolation of emergence at the level of physical systems, biological systems and psychic systems can bring new models that can also be applied to the concept of consciousness. The meaning and significance that seem to structure the nature of consciousness is found as direction of evolution and teleological finality, of integration in the whole system and in any complex system at all scales. Starting from the wave-corpuscle duality in quantum physics, we can propose a model for structuring reality, based on the emergence of systems that contribute to the integration and coherence of the entire reality. Physical-mathematical models based mainly on topology can provide a mathematical formalization path, and the paradigm of information could allow the development of a pattern of emergence, that is common to all systems, including the psychic system, the difference being given only by the degree of information complexity. Thus, the mind-brain duality, which has been dominating the representation on psychism for a few centuries, could be solved by an informational approach, describing the connection between object and subject, reality and human consciousness, between mind and brain, thus unifying the perspective on natural sciences and humanities. (shrink)

In Frege’s analysis of the relationship between science and fiction there are two important aspects, which the paper will discuss. It shows that Frege makes a strict distinction between Dichtung und Wissenschaft on the level of object language but not on the level of metalanguage. In his “On Sense and Reference” and in scattered remarks elsewhere Frege explains the semantics of scientific and everyday discourse. As a kind of side product he presents an explication of the concept of fictional discourse (...) concerning questions of illocutionary force and reference. Here Frege anticipates J. R. Searle’s speech-act-theory of fictional discourse, which allows to understand works of fiction as consisting of fictional discourse. On the basis of Frege’s distinctions this approach is defended against ontological arguments, which make use of terms like ‘fictive entities’ or ‘non-existent objects’ in the Meinongian tradition. Frege excludes the connotative or figurative elements of language, called “colourings and shadings” of sense or thought, from the scientific use of language and assigns such elements to “the art of poetry” or “eloquence”. The fact that the expression ‘colouring’ is itself a figurative term, raises a paradoxical question: To what extent does understanding Frege’s own explanation of the difference between sense and colouring depend on the poetic or at least rhetoric use of language? There are reasons to believe that Frege was—even if only reluctantly—aware of this paradox. Otherwise he would not have repeatedly emphasized that explanations of categorial logical distinctions cannot dispense with “figurative expressions”. Insofar as such distinctions are “reliant upon the accommodating understanding of the reader”, they pay tribute to a rhetoric of cognition. While Frege denies that colourings contribute to cognitive content, he must still admit that they make an indispensable protreptic contribution to conveying cognition. (shrink)

Political scientists should put aside questions about whether voters are rational or irrational, informed or uninformed, and questions about how flawed democracy is. Although they are interesting, these questions are secondary. Answering them in no way helps people—it does not help them with their violent neighborhoods, their declining incomes, their flooded homes, or their dying crops. Instead, researchers should focus on the first-order question of how to improve democratic accountability.

Some political philosophers believe that equality emerges as a moral concern where and because people coerce each other. I shall argue that they are wrong. The idea of coercion as a trigger of equality is neither as plausible nor as powerful as it may initially appear. Those who rely on the idea that coercion is among the conditions that give rise to equality as a moral demand face a threefold challenge. They will have to succeed in jointly (a) offering a (...) convincing account of the wrongness of coercion, (b) rendering cogent the idea that the demand of equality arises in response to the moral problem of coercion, and (c) identifying some types of interaction as relevantly coercive. This challenge, I believe, cannot be met. More precisely, I argue that two important accounts of coercion fail to meet it. (shrink)