Daniele Botti argues that John Rawls’s philosophy is importantly connected with classical American pragmatism and that Rawls’s intellectual trajectory did not take a “pragmatic turn” in the 1980s but possibly an “un-pragmatic” one. Both claims go against conventional wisdom, and Botti corroborates them with archival research.

In this paper, I argue that the debate on Composition as Identity—the thesis that any composite object is identical to its parts—is deadlocked because both the defenders and the detractors of the claim have so far failed to take its philosophical core at face value and have, as a result, defended and criticized respectively something that is not Composition as Identity. After establishing how Composition as Identity should properly be understood and proposing for it a new interpretation centered around the (...) novel notion of metaphysical information, I set forth a strategy to defend it that crucially rests on the indefinite extensibility of the domain of quantification. I eventually suggest that “Composition as Analysis” is a name that better reflects the content and theoretical proposal of the thesis that Composition as Identity is supposed to be. (shrink)

For the first time in print, this article reports passages from John Rawls’s graduate papers and annotations on books and manuscripts from his personal library. The analysis of this material shows the historical inaccuracy of the widespread assumption that Rawls’s philosophy owes very little to American pragmatism. Peirce’s notion of truth, as well as the holistic critique of pragmatism thatMortonWhite began in the late 1940s, prove significant at the very beginning of Rawls’s philosophical enterprise. In the light of this material, (...) it might be argued that Rawls’s elaboration of ‘reflective equilibrium’ started at least in part as an attempt to overcome the pending problems of pragmatism. (shrink)

The Health Impact Fund (HIF) is a project aimed at expanding access to life-saving drugs worldwide and incentivizing pharmaceutical companies to invest in research and development for neglected diseases. The HIF would invert the existing patent framework by rewarding ideas through their diffusion rather than protecting against this diffusion, by encouraging a collective rather than privatized wealth scheme. The basic idea behind the HIF is the creation of a new competitive market that centers on individuals who, under normal circumstances, exert (...) very little force on the tide of market demand. The HIF does not operate on standard market measures of demand, but instead measures demand as a product of needs, while in conventional market scenarios, private citizens and national welfare states pay for needs. The idea is that the HIF would create a functional, competitive market in which pharmaceutical profit is determined by the actual health impact of each new drug, a measure born from pharmacological and distributive efficacy. In this article, the basic features of and main challenges to the HIF are addressed. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the application of foundational ontologies, i.e., formal ontological theories in the philosophical sense, to provide a theoretically sound foun...

This paper develops two perspectives. On the one hand, it analyzes and reconstructs the relationship between wealth and poverty as addressed by Giordano Bruno in the Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, both against the backdrop of the new geographical discoveries and mercantilist theories and in relation to Bruno’s project of ethical, political, and religious renewal. On the other hand, it recovers Bruno’s passages on the ‘minuzzarie’ as a key concept to redress ‘ontological poverty’ by locating in every aspect of reality, (...) even insignificant ones, a center of vital energy. At the beginning and at the end of the paper, mention is made of some Heideggerian writings that reveal some common assumption with Bruno’s ideas. (shrink)

The present work aims to underline the role played by cultural variables on the development of social processes, both at micro and macro-social level. Specifically, I want to focus on the role played by the philosophical current of Confucianism in the process of medernization of Japan, which shows how the cultural aspects, both in terms of intenalized values, both in the form of cultural norms and models approved by the group have influence on the development of social processes. Japanese society (...) has succeeded in renconciling the fundamental elements of the confucian tradition with the modernization, elements that represent a variable that has turned out to be of significant importance in the process of development of Japan. (shrink)

Bruno Bernardi ouvre cet imposant recueil en dégageant la difficulté inhérente à son titre : peut-on trouver dans l’œuvre de Rousseau une philosophie? Les actes du colloque sur Rousseau ayant eu lieu en juin 2012 à l’ENS de Lyon manifestent un vrai renouvellement des lectures de l’œuvre du Genevois. Dans une histoire séquencée dont l’utilité pour les jeunes chercheurs justifierait à elle seule l’existence de cet ouvrage, B. Bernardi rappelle les grands jalons de la critique du xxe siècle. Le...

The way Ernst Cassirer understands Jean-Jacques Rousseau at the beginning of the 1930’s is interesting, in so far as it puts forward different mechanisms of interpretation, which Cassirer is not always conscious of. On the one hand, Cassirer claims to have a fresh and neutral interpretation of Rousseau’s works, going above divergent contemporaneous interpretations. On the other hand, his thought is actually determined by his personal philosophical formation, that is to say the neokantism of the Marburg School, and above all (...) by the political context. (shrink)

Unlike in the phrase “Virtual Reality,” in the phrase “Augmented Reality” the stress is put on the word “reality.” It seems, though, that we still lack a concept of reality which can fit the world of both humans and computers. In connection with this philosophical issue, this paper aims to provide the background for a better insight into the meaning of Augmented Reality and its impact on human behavior. My thesis is that an ecological version of direct perception’s realism constitutes (...) the most natural framework from which to start. The ecological approach to perception – namely, the Gibsonian theory of affordances – together with a non-dualistic, pragmatist and evolutionist notion of reality, perfectly fits this purpose. Thus, after a brief survey of the present state of AR technologies, it should become natural to interpret AR digital contents as implementations of affordances. (shrink)

Macpherson and Steinhorn 165–209) introduce some variants of the notion of o-minimality. One of the most interesting is C-minimality, which provides a natural setting to study algebraically closed-valued fields and some valued groups. In this paper we go further in the study of the structure of C-minimal valued groups, giving a partial characterization in the abelian case. We obtain the following principle: for abelian valued groups G for which the valuation satisfies some kind of compatibility with the multiplication by any (...) prime number p, being C-minimal is equivalent to the o-minimality of the expansion of the chain of valuations by the maps induced by the multiplication by each prime number in G, and by some unary predicates controlling the cardinality of the residual structures. This result is quite nice, because the class considered contains all the natural examples of abelian C-minimal valued groups of 165–209), and allows us to find many more examples. (shrink)

The present article reviews the state of public debate and legal provisions concerning end‐of‐life decision‐making in Italy and offers an evaluation of the moral and legal issues involved. The article further examines the content of a recent law concerning informed consent and advance treatment directives, the main court pronouncements that formed the basis for the law, and developments in the public debate and important jurisprudential acts subsequent to its approval. The moral and legal grounds for a positive evaluation of this (...) law, which attests that the patient may withhold or withdraw from life‐prolonging treatment, will be offered with reference to liberal approaches and particularly to the frameworks of care and virtue ethics; but reasons will also be offered in order to consider not only the latter but also broader range of end‐of‐life treatment decisions as morally apt options. In this light, we argue in favour of a further development of the Italian legislation to encompass forms of assisted suicide and active euthanasia. (shrink)

La presse italienne a suivi de très près l'agonie et la mort du pape Jean-Paul II. Il s'agit certainement de l'événement le plus médiatisé depuis les attentats terroristes du 11 septembre 2001. Les quatre titres italiens, malgré leur positionnement politique différent, analysent l'événement avec le même degré de dramatisation et d'intensité. Ils proposent un récit fortement sentimental à travers le recours à un langage émotionnel, à des images touchantes ou, encore, à une mise en page spécifique. Les thèmes qui reviennent (...) le plus souvent font appel au caractère et au charisme de Jean-Paul II, à son recours aux médias dans le but de véhiculer le message chrétien. Son rapport avec les jeunes est également un des sujets privilégiés par la presse italienne, pour cela son Pontificat est qualifié de révolutionnaire. Si les quatre quotidiens italiens étudiés proposent une analyse similaire, à travers leur récit d'un « événement d'émotion planétaire », des différences persistent. S'adressant à un public spécifique, chaque titre emploie son propre langage, il renvoie à des références précises et touche des sensibilités diverses. Malgré une uniformisation substantielle, le clivage droite-gauche semble persister.The Italian press has closely followed the agony and death of Pope John Paul II. It is certainly the most publicized event since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The four Italian titles, despite their different political positions, analyze the event with the same degree of intensity and drama. They offer a highly sentimental story through the use of emotional language, images or touching, even to a specific layout. The themes that recur most often involve the character and charisma of John Paul II, in his use of the media in order to convey the Christian message. His relationship with young people is also one of the subjects favored by the Italian press for his pontificate that is called revolutionary. If the four studied Italian newspapers offer a similar analysis, through their narrative of a "global event emotion", differences persist. Addressing a specific audience, each title uses its own language, it refers to specific references and touches different sensibilities. Despite a substantial uniformity, the left-right divide seems to persist. (shrink)

Psychology doesn’t seem to be really interested in the theme of gift; in the last decades it focus on the central role of recognition in the psyche building up. The authors underline Chiara Lubich’s original intuition linking profoundly the them of gift and recognition.

This article discusses women's positions in higher education in Europe and compares these with a case study analysis of senior women at one `new' UK university. The study comprises interview data from 22 senior women in both academic schools and departments and in functional departments. The main findings include substantial differences between younger and older women in their career progression. While for both groups having children was a major in uence, the older women, especially the academics, had to weave their (...) career developments around those of their husbands and caring for their children. Nevertheless, they displayed strong entrepreneurial tendencies, becoming highly skilled at spotting and seizing opportunities. The younger women were more selfconfident in a `postfeminist' period where young women often assume equality has been achieved and material support systems such as childcare is well established. In contrast with the older women, they fitted their family lives around their careers. Balancing their gender had become central to both their private and their work lives. The older women were sensitive to the subtle homosocial culture, attitudes and norms in the university, while the younger women relied more on a meritocratic approach to their careers, and were seemingly less aware of the institutional gendered power relations. Neither group showed signs of collective working or networking in the interests of themselves or women generally in the university. These characteristics imply that while the proportion of senior women may continue to increase, the strongly gendered culture is less likely to be challenged. (shrink)

We prove an Ax-Kochen-Ershov like transfer principle for groups acting on groups. The simplest case is the following: let B be a soluble group acting on an abelian group G so that G is a torsion-free divisible module over the group ring Z[B], then the theory of B determines the one of the two-sorted structure $\langle G, B, *\rangle$ , where * is the action of B on G. More generally, we show a similar principle for structures $\langle G, B, (...) *\rangle$ , where G is a torsion-free divisible module over the quotient of Z[B] by the annulator of G. Two applications come immediately from this result: First, for not necessarily commutative domains, where we consider the action of a subgroup of the invertible elements on the additive group. We obtain then the decidability of a weakened structure of ring, with partial multiplication. The second application is to pure groups. The semi-direct product of G by B is bi- interpretable with our structure $\langle G, B, *\rangle$ . Thus, we obtain stable decidable groups that are not linear over a field. (shrink)

« Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée. » Il n’est pas rare de voir dans l’incipit du Discours de la méthode un de ces énoncés cartésiens qui, par leur simplicité et leur transparence, marquèrent une rupture avec la technicité de la philosophie scolastique des siècles précédents. Pourtant, à se pencher sur les commentaires qui ont été produits de ce texte, dès sa publication, il apparaît que pour un certain nombre de contemporains de Descartes, il y (...) avait là une référence à la théorie dite de l’intensio et remissio formarum – ou latitude des formes – qui, de Pierre Lombard à Nicolas d’Oresme en passant par Richard de Middleton, fit l’objet de discussions soutenues pendant plus de six siècles. Cette théorie énonce que seules les qualités accidentelles sont susceptibles de variations intensives dans une substance, contrairement aux propriétés essentielles qui, elles, sont invariables. L’énoncé de Descartes, aux atours de simple proverbe, cacherait en réalité un tour de force argumentatif : tenant pour acquis que la pensée constitue l’attribut essentiel de l’âme, Descartes mobiliserait la théorie de l’intensio et remissio formarum pour affirmer qu’en chaque âme, cette pensée n’est pas susceptible de plus et de moins. Il devient alors possible de définir certaines opérations épistémiques élémentaires qui s’observent à part égale en chacun de nous, et ne sont pas soumises à la variabilité des compétences individuelles.Mais ce point d’interprétation du texte de Descartes ne conserverait qu’un intérêt herméneutique s’il ne trouvait, outre-Manche et quelques dizaines d’années plus tard, un remarquable rebondissement : En 1690, John Locke, dans L’Essai sur l’entendement humain, identifie parfaitement la référence médiévale sous-jacente à cet énoncé canonique du cartésianisme, et la discute avec la plus grande rigueur. En indexant la pensée sur l’attention, et en remarquant que cette attention est susceptible de variations d’intensités au cours du temps, Locke en vient à se demander s’il ne faut pas renoncer au postulat cartésien selon lequel la pensée constituerait l’essence de l’âme, et lui préférer l’hypothèse selon laquelle cette pensée ne serait pour l’âme qu’une activité. (shrink)

Prenant acte de la disqualification du sentiment religieux à la fin du xvii e siècle, sous l’impulsion à la fois, de la querelle du pur amour et de la critique philosophique des sentiments, cet article remonte en deçà de cette époque pour examiner le corpus de la littérature spirituelle du xvi e siècle et du début du xvii e siècle. Cette littérature mystique interroge le rôle et la valeur des affects au sein d’un itinéraire spirituel et permet de réévaluer la (...) question d’une spécificité des émotions religieuses par rapport aux émotions naturelles. Nous montrerons que l’affectivité religieuse n’est pas tant caractérisée par un apport de sentiments nouveaux que par une conversion de valeur des sentiments naturellement éprouvés. (shrink)

Le chapitre 13 de l’Épître aux Romains pose les bases sur lesquelles repose toute la conception du pouvoir dans la pensée politique médiévale. L’objectif de cet article est de reconstruire le processus de longue durée par lequel l’Occident latin a progressivement admis et théorisé la possibilité de désobéir aux autorités temporelles, bien que dans le cadre d’une théorie du pouvoir (à savoir la théorie paulino-augustinienne du pouvoir), qui semble ne laisser aucune place à la dissidence, conférant à chaque potestas une (...) origine divine et une nature providentielle. L’auteur retrace les principales étapes de ce processus : de l’idée que pour obtenir l’obéissance inconditionnelle de ses sujets, il faut se montrer « rex christianissimus » (protéger les personnes et les biens des ministres du Christ), à la difficile légitimation du tyrannicide chez Jean de Salisbury ; des pages de Thomas d’Aquin sur la déposition d’un souverain qui ne se soucie pas de la communis utilitas, à la reconnaissance explicite du pouvoir de destitution des seigneurs séculiers par certains théoriciens politiques des xiv e et xv e siècles. (shrink)

This work is inspired by the correspondence of Malcev between rings and groups. Let A be a domain with unit, and S a multiplicative group of invertible elements. We define A S as the structure obtained from A by restraining the multiplication to A × S, and σ(A S ) as the group of functions from A to A of the form $x \longrightarrow xa + b$ , where (a, b) belongs to S × A. We show that A S (...) and σ(A S ) are interpretable in each other, and then, that we can transfer some properties between classes (or theories) of "reduced" domains and corresponding groups, such as being elementary, axiomatisability (for classes), decidability, completeness, or, in some cases, existence of a model-completion (for theories). We study the extensions of the additive group of A by the group S, acting by right multiplication, and show that sometimes σ(A S ) is the unique extension of this type. We also give conditions allowing us to eliminate parameters appearing in interpretations. We emphasize the case where the domain is a division ring K and S is its multiplicative group K × . Here, the interpretations can always be done without parameters. If the centre of K contains more than two elements, then σ(K) is the only extension of the additive group of K by its multiplicative group acting by right multiplication, and the class of all such σ(K)'s is elementary and finitely axiomatisable. We give, in particular, an axiomatisation for this class and for the class of σ(K)'s where K is an algebraically closed field of characteristic 0. From these results it follows that some classical model-companion results about theories of fields can be translated and restated as results about theories of solvable groups of class 2. (shrink)

This article sheds light on John Rawls’s views on John Dewey’s philosophical temperament by investigating unpublished papers and lectures that Rawls wrote and delivered across the late 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s, and the early 1970s. Moreover, the article shows that Rawls’s rejection of Kant’s dualisms predates by at least three decades the “Dewey Lectures” (1980) and that Dewey’s notion of deliberation as “dramatic rehearsal in imagination” might have had an impact on Rawls’s development of the notion of “reflective equilibrium” (...) as a state of affairs that we strive to reach in ethical reflection. (shrink)