Duas questões fundamentais da filosofia Kantiana(o caráter 'prático'da liberdade e o primado da prática sobre a teoria)podem colocar-se em termos da teoria da linguagem(a teoria dos atos performativos)de J.L.Austin.Dada a total ausência da questão da linguagem na filosofia de Kant,o trabalho estuda o alcance e a legitimidade desta 'trascrição' linguistica das duas teses kantianas.

As the usual regulatory framework did not fit well during the last Ebola outbreak, innovative thinking still needed. In the absence of an outbreak, randomised controlled trials of clinical efficacy in humans cannot be done, while during an outbreak such trials will continue to face significant practical, philosophical, and ethical challenges. This article argues that researchers should also test the safety and effectiveness of novel vaccines in wild apes by employing a pluralistic approach to evidence. There are three reasons to (...) test vaccines in wild populations of apes: i) protect apes; ii) reduce Ebola transmission from wild animals to humans; and iii) accelerate vaccine development and licensing for humans. Data obtained from studies of vaccines among wild apes and chimpanzees may even be considered sufficient for licensing new vaccines for humans. This strategy will serve to benefit both wild apes and humans. (shrink)

John Searle claims that reasoning requires libertarian free will. He hopes this can be reconciled with a naturalistic neuroscience through a sophisticated theory of emergence, which includes indeterminism, and topdown causation. This is allegedly naturalistic because each mental state is causally reducible to a realizing neuronal state. I argue that Searle’s theory fails to overcome four main problems and cannot account for reasoning without implicit appeal to nonnaturalistic entities.

If the words in Spinoza’s Ethics are considered as symbols, then certain words in the definitions of the Ethics can be replaced with symbols from set theory and we can reexamine Spinoza’s first definitions within a logical–mathematical frame. The authors believe that, some aspects of Spinoza’s work can be explained and illustrated through mathematics. A semantic relation between the definitions of the philosopher and set theory is presented. It is explained each chosen symbol. The ontological argument is developed through modal (...) logic. And finally, we present some conclusions drawn from this work. (shrink)

We propose a new approach for tracing value change. Value change may lead to a mismatch between current value priorities in society and the values for which technologies were designed in the past, such as energy technologies based on fossil fuels, which were developed when sustainability was not considered a very important value. Better anticipating value change is essential to avoid a lack of social acceptance and moral acceptability of technologies. While value change can be studied historically and qualitatively, we (...) propose a more quantitative approach that uses large text corpora. It uses probabilistic topic models, which allow us to trace values that are latent. We demonstrate the approach for five types of value change in technology. Our approach is useful for testing hypotheses about value change, such as verifying whether value change has occurred and identifying patterns of value change. The approach can be used to trace value change for various technologies and text corpora, including scientific articles, newspaper articles, and policy documents. (shrink)

Current orthodoxy in research ethics assumes that subjects of clinical trials reserve rights to withdraw at any time and without giving any reason. This view sees the right to withdraw as a simple extension of the right to refuse to participate all together. In this paper, however, I suggest that subjects should assume some responsibilities for the internal validity of the trial at consent and that these responsibilities should be captured by contract. This would allow the researcher to impose a (...) penalty on the subject if he were to withdraw without good reason and on a whim. This proposal still leaves open the possibility of withdrawing without penalty when it is in the subject's best interests to do so. Giving researchers recourse to legal remedy may now be necessary to protect the science, as existing methods used to increase retention are inadequate for one reason or another. (shrink)

A biblical approach to reconciling God’s sovereignty with creaturely responsibility should avoid the extremes of global occasionalism and completely autonomous creatures. This paper evaluates the standard intermediary solutions offered by conservationists and concurrentists. It argues that while each contributes insights which a satisfactory account should retain, none is fully adequate. Even Leibniz’s sophisticated response, which accounts for providence, miracles, and moral responsibility, unacceptably abridges creaturely power to implement decisions. My alternative proposal seeks to explain how creatures can retain full responsibility (...) for their actions even though God reserves the right to override creaturely power with His greater power. (shrink)

These rhetorical texts by Apuleius, second-century Latin writer and author of the famous novel Metamorphoses or Golden Ass, have not been translated into English since 1909. They are some of the very few Latin speeches surviving from their century, and constitute important evidence for Latin and Roman North African social and intellectual culture in the second century AD, a period where there is increasing interest amongst classicists and ancient historians. They are the work of a talented writer who is being (...) increasingly viewed as the major literary artist of his time in Latin. (shrink)

Entre los filósofos contemporáneos que más han hecho por el desarrollo y la consolidación académica de la historia del pensamiento español, destaca la figura de José Luis Abellán. Este libro, escrito por algunos de los más importantes especialistas en esta disciplina, pretende clarificar críticamente la obra de Abellán y recorrer algunos de los temas a los que mayor relevancia ha concedido el autor de la vasta e imprescindible "Historia crítica del pensamiento español". El erasmismo, el mito de Cristo, la generación (...) del 98, Ortega y Gasset y sus discípulos o el exilio del siglo veinte, son algunos de los temas abordados por los autores del libro, y sobre los que José Luis Abellán nos ha ofrecido artículos y monografías imprescindibles para conocer la historia de la filosofía española. (shrink)

In this article, we query binaries of mobility and immobility in language studies via an empirical focus on language/social practices in a site that bridges the global North and global South. To do so, we work from a Southern praxis perspective to analyze discourses/knowledges informing the performance of accounts from Cambodian men, interviewed about transactional same-sex relationship practices between (ostensibly immobile) local men and (ostensibly mobile) male tourists to Cambodia from the global North. The analysis focuses on a process in (...) which participants’ chronotopic awareness of language shapes a negotiation of power, knowledge, and action with respect to these relationships. Encompassing the discursive positioning of selves and others through the deployment of relevant and affective chronotopes, the talk from these Cambodian men allows us to challenge assumptions about (im)mobility, awareness, agency, sexuality, and power, and demonstrate how these are accessed in multiple ways at this site of North/South contact. (shrink)

The present article is a sympathetic critique of the most prominent contemporary articulations of family abolitionism. It examines whether queer communist family abolitionism is successful in linking an account of reasons for abolition, with an account of the means of abolition, and finally with an account of the ends of abolition in the form of speculation on a possible world without families. Recent work by M.E. O’Brien has developed these connections in ways that have never been done so thoroughly before; (...) but the rejection of states as an institutional form of political power leaves it unclear what forms of equality we could expect in such a world, and why coercive power would be unnecessary there. Family abolition is a utopian political agenda; but that utopianism needs to be constrained by a realist concern with issues of power, resources, and human capacities. This will require confronting trade-offs and imperfections within possible worlds without families. The recognition that there are many paths to a world without families, and many possible such worlds, is the first step towards aligning reasons, means, and ends and confronting the social and political trade-offs that this entails. (shrink)