We present a generalisation of the type-theoretic interpretation of constructive set theory into Martin-Löf type theory. The original interpretation treated logic in Martin-Löf type theory via the propositions-as-types interpretation. The generalisation involves replacing Martin-Löf type theory with a new type theory in which logic is treated as primitive. The primitive treatment of logic in type theories allows us to study reinterpretations of logic, such as the double-negation translation.

We define and investigate Heyting-valued interpretations for Constructive Zermelo–Frankel set theory . These interpretations provide models for CZF that are analogous to Boolean-valued models for ZF and to Heyting-valued models for IZF. Heyting-valued interpretations are defined here using set-generated frames and formal topologies. As applications of Heyting-valued interpretations, we present a relative consistency result and an independence proof.

We prove a version of the associated sheaf functor theorem in Algebraic Set Theory. The proof is established working within a Heyting pretopos equipped with a system of small maps satisfying the axioms originally introduced by Joyal and Moerdijk. This result improves on the existing developments by avoiding the assumption of additional axioms for small maps and the use of collection sites.

We introduce type-theoretic algebraic weak factorisation systems and show how they give rise to homotopy-theoretic models of Martin-Löf type theory. This is done by showing that the comprehension category associated with a type-theoretic algebraic weak factorisation system satisfies the assumptions necessary to apply a right adjoint method for splitting comprehension categories. We then provide methods for constructing several examples of type-theoretic algebraic weak factorisation systems, encompassing the existing groupoid and cubical sets models, as well as new models based on normal (...) fibrations. (shrink)

La traduction latine des Dialoghi della historia du philosophe néo-platonicien Francesco Patrizi da Cherso est publiée à Bâle en 1570. L’étude de la circulation de ce texte et des choix de traduction permet de mieux comprendre la réception des artes historicae italiennes dans le Nord de l’Europe et les fluctuations ou limites du latin face à la montée en puissance de l’italien vernaculaire comme langue philosophique.

La traduction latine des Dialoghi della historia du philosophe néo-platonicien Francesco Patrizi da Cherso est publiée à Bâle en 1570. L’étude de la circulation de ce texte et des choix de traduction permet de mieux comprendre la réception des artes historicae italiennes dans le Nord de l’Europe et les fluctuations ou limites du latin face à la montée en puissance de l’italien vernaculaire comme langue philosophique.

De l'antiquité à la Renaissance, la notion de certitude est au coeur de la structuration de la pensée. Cet ouvrage réunit les contributions de spécialistes, qui explorent tous la littérature latine en mettant cette notion à l'épreuve de différentes disciplines et époques.

Taste as Experience puts the pleasure of food at the center of human experience. It shows how the sense of taste informs our preferences for and relationship to nature, pushes us toward ethical practices of consumption, and impresses upon us the importance of aesthetics. Eating is often dismissed as a necessary aspect of survival, and our personal enjoyment of food is considered a quirk. Nicola Perullo sees food as the only portion of the world we take in on a (...) daily basis, constituting our first and most significant encounter with the earth. Perullo has long observed people's food practices and has listened to their food experiences. He draws on years of research to explain the complex meanings behind our food choices and the thinking that accompanies our gustatory actions. He also considers our indifference toward food as a force influencing us as much as engagement. For Perullo, taste is value and wisdom. It cannot be reduced to mere chemical or cultural factors but embodies the quality and quantity of our earthly experience. (shrink)

This book is the first extensive treatment of Husserl's phenomenology of time-consciousness. Nicolas de Warren uses detailed analysis of texts by Husserl, some only recently published in German, to examine Husserl's treatment of time-consciousness and its significance for his conception of subjectivity. He traces the development of Husserl's thinking on the problem of time from Franz Brentano's descriptive psychology, and situates it in the framework of his transcendental project as a whole. Particular discussions include the significance of time-consciousness for other (...) phenomenological themes: perceptual experience, the imagination, remembrance, self-consciousness, embodiment, and the consciousness of others. The result is an illuminating exploration of how and why Husserl considered the question of time-consciousness to be the most difficult, yet also the most central, of all the challenges facing his unique philosophical enterprise"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart was born in Yorkshire in 1907 to second generation Jewish immigrants. Having won a scholarship to Oxford University, he went on to become the most famous legal philosopher of the twentieth century. From 1932-40 H.L.A Hart practised as a barrister in London. He was pronounced physically unfit for military service in 1940, and was recruited by MI5, where he worked until 1945. During his time at the Bar he had continued to study philosophy and at M15 (...) his interest was further stimulated by his philosopher colleagues in M16, Stuart Hampshire and Gilbert Ryle. After the war, Hart returned to Oxford to take up a philosophy fellowship, later to become Professor of Jurisprudence. H.L.A Hart single-handedly reinvented the philosophy of law and influenced the nation's thinking in the 1960s on abortion, the legalization of homosexuality, and on capital punishment. Hart's approach to legal philosophy was at once disarmingly simple and breathtakingly ambitious, combining as it did the insights of Austin and Bentham and the new linguistic philosophy of J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He sought to elucidate a concept of law which would be of relevance to all forms of law, wherever or whenever they arose: his bestselling book, The Concept of Law, has sold tens of thousands of copies worldwide. In 1941, he married Jenifer Williams (a high-ranking civil servant, later an Oxford academic) with whom he had four children. Their relationship was an enduring if unconventional one. In the early 1950s, Jenifer was rumoured to be having a long-standing affair with Isaiah Berlin, one of Hart's closest friends. She was also, falsely, accused by the Sunday Times of having been a Russian spy, an allegation which was all the more scandalous given Hart's position at MI5 during the War. Nicola Lacey draws on Hart's previously unpublished diaries and letters to reveal a complex inner life. Outwardly successful, Hart was in fact tormented by doubts about his intellectual abilities, his sexual identity and his capacity to form close relationships. Her biography also sheds fascinating light on the origins of his ideas, and assesses his overall contribution. Above all, it chronicles of a life which had a depth ands impact far greater than many of Hart's readers have realized. (shrink)

The empirical study of belief is emerging at a rapid clip, uniting work from all corners of cognitive science. Reliance on belief in understanding and predicting behavior is widespread. Examples can be found, inter alia, in the placebo, attribution theory, theory of mind, and comparative psychological literatures. Research on belief also provides evidence for robust generalizations, including about how we fix, store, and change our beliefs. Evidence supports the existence of a Spinozan system of belief fixation: one that is automatic (...) and independent of belief rejection. Independent research supports the existence of a system of fragmented belief storage: one that relies on large numbers of causally isolated, context-sensitive stores of belief in memory. Finally, empirical and observational data support at least two systems of belief change. One system adheres, mostly, to epistemological norms of updating; the other, the psychological immune system, functions to guard our most centrally held beliefs from potential inconsistency with newly formed beliefs. Refining our under- standing of these systems can shed light on pressing real-world issues, such as how fake news, propaganda, and brainwashing exploit our psychology of belief, and how best to construct our modern informational world. (shrink)

We aim to do two things in this article. On the positive end, our goal is to explain how some seemingly incompatible aspects of belief live together, by presenting distinct mechanistic explanations of each of them: in particular we want to show how belief can be discerning, credulous, rational, and irrational. After clarifying our positive view, we take aim at some competitor views in the second half of the paper, particularly offering critiques of epistemic vigilance and social marketplace accounts of (...) belief. We conclude by inviting proponents to provide an architecture for belief that can be tested against existing models. (shrink)

Questa "Introduzione a Vico" offre gli strumenti critici essenziali per intendere l'opera del filosofo alla luce delle più recenti prospettive storiografiche.

" Si rien ne change avant un demi-siècle, écrivait Flaubert, l'Europe languira dans de grandes ténèbres ". un semblable pressentiment en persuadait Baudelaire : " Le monde va finir ". Comme si le sentiment de quelque décadence était aussi constant qu'inévitable, Péguy le notait encore : " Tout ce que nous avons défendu recule de jour en jour devant une barbarie, devant une inculture croissante, devant l'envahissement de la corruption politique et sociale. " hier encore, à l'occasion d'un tout banal (...) changement de calendrier, historiens, sociologues, politologues, futurologues ne furent-ils pas sollicités de scruter dans ce qu'ils connaissent du passé ce qu'ils pourraient y voir du futur? Or d'où vient que nous nous interrogions avec autant de perplexité sur l'humanité à venir, su ce n'est que nous doutions de nous y reconnaître? D'où vient ce sentiment d'un hiatus entre ce qui nous précédait et ce qui déjà nous suit? Cet essai s'interroge sur la crise de la conscience contemporaine. Est-elle aussi illusoire que toujours, ou mieux fondée que jamais? Dans un univers de toutes parts médiatisé par les sciences, administré, programmé, planifié et rationalisé par les techniques, la répudiation de la raison, la destitution de la vérité, la frénésie de l'immédiation ne dessinent-elles pas une nouvelle figure de l'homme? Livré à toutes les médiations et n'aspirant qu'à l'immédiat, ne suivant aucune règle mais conditionné par toutes, calculant toutes choses et s'abandonnant aux plus incontrôlées, ; n'en est-il pas disloqué? (shrink)

Our discussion of the commentaries begins, at the evolutionary level, with issues raised by our account of the evolution of morality in terms of partner-choice mutualism. We then turn to the cognitive level and the characterization and workings of fairness. In a final section, we discuss the degree to which our fairness-based approach to morality extends to norms that are commonly considered moral even though they are distinct from fairness.

A meta-analysis and an experiment show that the degree of compression of the in-depth dimension of visual space relative to the frontal dimension increases quickly as a function of the distance between the stimulus and the observer at first, but the rate of change slows beyond 7 m from the observer, reaching an apparent asymptote of about 50 %. In addition, the compression of visual space is greater for monocular and reduced cue conditions. The pattern of compression of the in-depth (...) dimension as a function of distance is similar to the ratio of in-depth to frontal visual angles of stimuli, but is not as extreme as this ratio would suggest, implying that observers are incapable of fully ignoring size information provided by cues to depth. Size and distance judgments may be described by an Affine transformation of physical space; however, the compression parameter in this model changes as a function of distance from the observer and other experimental conditions. (shrink)

This article defends a relational account of personhood. I argue that the structure of personhood consists of dyadic relations between persons who can wrong or be wronged by one another, even if some of them lack moral competence. I draw on recent work on directed duties to outline the structure of moral communities of persons. The upshot is that we can construct an inclusive theory of personhood that can accommodate nonhuman persons based on shared community membership. I argue that, once (...) we unpack the internal relation between directed duties, moral status, and flourishing, relations can ground personhood and include nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Most people believe that suffering is intrinsically bad. In conjunction with facts about our world and plausible moral principles, this yields a pro tanto obligation to reduce suffering. This is the intuitive starting point for the moral argument in favor of interventions to prevent wild animal suffering. If we accept the moral principle that we ought, pro tanto, to reduce the suffering of all sentient creatures, and we recognize the prevalence of suffering in the wild, then we seem committed to (...) the existence of such a pro tanto obligation. Of course, competing values such as the aesthetic, scientific or moral values of species, biodiversity, naturalness or wildness, might be relevant to the all-things-considered case for or against intervention. Still, many argue that, even if we were to give some weight to such values, no plausible theory could resist the conclusion that WAS is overridingly important. This article is concerned with large-scale interventions to prevent WAS and their tractability and the deep epistemic problem they raise. We concede that suffering gives us a reason to prevent it where it occurs, but we argue that the nature of ecosystems leaves us with no reason to predict that interventions would reduce, rather than exacerbate, suffering. We consider two interventions, based on gene editing technology, proposed as holding promise to prevent WAS; raise epistemic concerns about them; discuss their potential moral costs; and conclude by proposing a way forward: to justify interventions to prevent WAS, we need to develop models that predict the effects of interventions on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and animals’ well-being. (shrink)

Malebranche's Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion is in many ways the best introduction to his thought, and provides the most systematic exposition of his philosophy as a whole. In it, he presents clear and comprehensive statements of his two best-known contributions to metaphysics and epistemology, namely, the doctrines of occasionalism and vision in God; he also states his views on such central issues as self-knowledge, the existence of the external world and the problem of theodicy. His skilful handling of (...) the dialogue form enables the reader to see how he responds to objections made to his earlier work The Search after Truth. This edition presents a translation of the text which is clear, readable and more accurate than any of its predecessors, together with an introduction that analyses Malebranche's central teachings and explains the importance of the Dialogues in the context of seventeenth-century philosophy. (shrink)

We present a solution to the problem of defining a counterpart in Algebraic Set Theory of the construction of internal sheaves in Topos Theory. Our approach is general in that we consider sheaves as determined by Lawvere-Tierney coverages, rather than by Grothendieck coverages, and assume only a weakening of the axioms for small maps originally introduced by Joyal and Moerdijk, thus subsuming the existing topos-theoretic results.

F. Enriques and G. de Santillana have begun in collaboration the composition of a general history of scientific thought. The first volume of this work, which has been recently published, is concerned with the science of antiquity,1 and to a large extent covers the same ground as the history of ancient philosophy, as the frontiers of philosophy and natural science, at any rate until the time of Aristotle, were not yet clearly differentiated. But the two historians are interested in bringing (...) into prominence a great many problems and personalities that the history of philosophy generally leaves on one side, although they help to complete and vivify the picture of the mentality of the ancients. Mathematics, medicine, geography, astronomy, applied mechanics, and physics, in short all the particular scientific studies that were just beginning to detach themselves from the parent trunk of general philosophy are studied by the authors in their individual developments and through the personalities of their cultivators. The explanations are clear and simple and can be followed even by readers unversed in science; the information is at first hand and is supplemented by a careful discussion of sources. The scientific questions are not isolated from the historical setting of the civilization of antiquity, but are shown in relation to matters of philosophy, religion, art, and moral and political life. The bibliography, intended for the more purely scientific and technical departments of philosophy, forms a very useful and timely completion of the bibliography of philosophic thought in general. (shrink)

About a year ago some important philosophical works were published in Italy which, both in the agreement and in the divergence of the trends they indicate, may be useful for characterizing the present situation of Italian philosophy. I think it opportune, therefore, for the information of the English reader, to give a fuller notice of these books than usual. One of them is by Ugo Spirito, La vita come amore , with the subtitle “The downfall of Christian civilization ”. Ugo (...) Spirito, who was one of the most intelligent and restless pupils of Giovanni Gentile, announced his secession from idealism in 1937.In that year he published a book entitled La vita come ricerca , in which, as sole alternative to idealistic philosophy, henceforth considered untenable, he pointed to a philosophy of never concluded enquiry, which, while positing numerous problems, never solves them. The intention of the book was to conclude in the impossibility of philosophy as “system” or as “metaphysics”, on the supposition that all the possibilities of metaphysics had been exhausted in the course of its historical development, culminating in Gentile. In a certain sense this presupposition remains in the book now under examination; but here it is a question of defining positively the way that philosophy, and with it human life, ought to take, which is, according to Spirito, the way of love. (shrink)

About a year ago some important philosophical works were published in Italy which, both in the agreement and in the divergence of the trends they indicate, may be useful for characterizing the present situation of Italian philosophy. I think it opportune, therefore, for the information of the English reader, to give a fuller notice of these books than usual. One of them is by Ugo Spirito, La vita come amore, with the subtitle “The downfall of Christian civilization ”. Ugo Spirito, (...) who was one of the most intelligent and restless pupils of Giovanni Gentile, announced his secession from idealism in 1937.In that year he published a book entitled La vita come ricerca, in which, as sole alternative to idealistic philosophy, henceforth considered untenable, he pointed to a philosophy of never concluded enquiry, which, while positing numerous problems, never solves them. The intention of the book was to conclude in the impossibility of philosophy as “system” or as “metaphysics”, on the supposition that all the possibilities of metaphysics had been exhausted in the course of its historical development, culminating in Gentile. In a certain sense this presupposition remains in the book now under examination; but here it is a question of defining positively the way that philosophy, and with it human life, ought to take, which is, according to Spirito, the way of love. (shrink)

In the series Collezione di Filosofia published by Taylor of Turin since 1947, some of the most significant works on Italian existentialism have appeared. The series was inaugurated by two books by the writer of this article: Introduzione all esistenzialismo, second edition, 1947 ; and Filosofia religione scienza, 1947. These were followed by Pietro Chiodi, L'esistenzialismo di Heidegger, 1947; Armando Vedaldi, Essere gli altri, 1948; Uberto Scarpelli, Esistenzialismo e marxismo, 1949; Enzo Paci, II nulla e il problema dell'uomo, 1950; Luigi (...) Pareyson, Esistenza e persona, 1950; and Armando Vedaldi, Struttura della proprietà, 1951. (shrink)

L'ŒIL, Observatoire d'Ethique Interculturelle de Lyon, a pour objectif de préserver la dimension éthique de notre société démocratique et pluraliste dans son approche de l'homme. De nouveaux savoirs et techniques, le dynamisme de la recherche scientifique, les forces du marché, le souci de juste allocation des ressources, ainsi que les demandes de la société, mettent les acteurs des systèmes de santé dans des situations confuses. Cet ouvrage est le premier témoignage des rencontres et des recherches décidées par ces auteurs venus (...) d'horizons divers, engagés dans l'ensemble du monde francophone à partir de Lyon où se sont tenues les Premières Journées internationales francophones d'Ethique interculturelle, en 2004. Pour les auteurs de cet ouvrage, l'humanité peut mieux se constituer en s'ouvrant sur le différent, sur le multiple. Par regards croisés, ils questionnent la place relative du progrès, abandonnant le mythe simpliste selon lequel seul le progrès techno-économique entraîne les progrès sociaux, politiques et moraux... Au contraire, ils adoptent les principes d'incertitude et de complexité. Ils s'interrogent sur l'éthique interculturelle résultant d'une interaction à géométrie variable entre nos appartenances à différents groupes humains - culturels, sociaux, professionnels... sur le bon usage de la vie qui peut présupposer d'avoir en tête un archétype de la vie humaine, une vie exprimée dans sa plénitude. Certaines cultures ont exalté le héros, le chevalier ou le saint, avant de mettre en avant l'homme engagé ou l'entrepreneur accompli. Ils partagent la conviction que l'univers, la vie en général et la vie humaine en particulier ne sont pas des réalités monolithiques, mais résultent de l'interaction entre des polarités apparemment opposées, mais complémentaires. En effet, chaque être humain résulte des relations tissées avec l'Autre, s'enrichissant personnellement à travers chacune d'entre elles, s'ouvrant ainsi progressivement à toute l'humanité dans sa diversité. Nous construisons notre singularité en fonction de notre ouverture sur l'universel. Ce livre multidisciplinaire intéressera médecins et autres soignants, philosophes, spécialistes des sciences humaines et de l'éducation, des sciences exactes, voire responsables politiques. (shrink)

During the thirteenth century, Aristotelian hylomorphism became the cornerstone of scholastic natural philosophy. However, this theory was fragmented into a plurality of interpretations and reformulations, sparking a rich philosophical debate. This article focuses on Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253), one of the earliest Latin philosophers to directly engage with Aristotle’s natural philosophy. Specifically, it delves into Grosseteste’s perspective on hylomorphism, emphasizing two controversial doctrines that characterized British scholasticism in the late thirteenth century: universal hylomorphism and formal pluralism. The former claims that (...) all substances, whether bodily or spiritual, are hylomorphic compounds, that is, they are made of matter and form. Formal pluralism, in turn, maintains that hylomorphic substances possess more than one substantial form simultaneously. After a brief introduction, the paper proceeds, first, to examine the type of hylomorphism endorsed by Grosseteste, shedding light on an obscure passage that seems to suggest universal hylomorphism. Second, the examination expands on Grosseteste’s theory of bodily form and emphasizes the apparent contradiction of this theory with universal hylomorphism. The discussion then turns to Grosseteste’s endorsement of formal pluralism and the functionality he envisioned being expressed by the bodily form. Finally, the paper draws conclusions about Grosseteste’s revised hylomorphic account. (shrink)

In this article we argue that the social value of health research should be conceptualized as a function of both the expected benefits of the research and the priority that the beneficiaries deserve. People deserve greater priority the worse off they are. This conception of social value can be applied for at least two important purposes: in health research priority setting when research funders, policy-makers, or researchers decide between alternative research projects; and in evaluating the ethics of proposed research proposals (...) when research ethics committees assess whether the social value of the research is sufficient to justify the risks and burdens to research participants and others. In assessing how far a proposed research project will advance the interests of people who are more disadvantaged, research priority setters and RECs should examine the diseases that the research targets and the type of research. Just as certain diseases impose a greater burden on people who are more disadvantaged, so certain types of intervention and forms of research are more likely to benefit people who are more disadvantaged. We outline which populations are likely to be representative of the global worst off and identify what types of health research, and which disease categories, are priorities for these populations. (shrink)

In order to describe the logic of morality, "contractualist" philosophers have studied how individuals behave when they choose to follow their moral intuitions. These individuals, contractualists note, often act as if they have bargained and thus reached an agreement with others about how to distribute the benefits and burdens of mutual cooperation. Using this observation, such philosophers argue that the purpose of morality is to maximize the benefits of human interaction. The resulting "contract" analogy is both insightful and puzzling. On (...) one hand, it captures the pattern of moral intuitions, thus answering questions about human cooperation: why do humans cooperate? Why should the distribution of benefits be proportionate to each person's contribution? Why should the punishment be proportionate to the crime? Why should the rights be proportionate to the duties? On the other hand, the analogy provides a mere as-if explanation for human cooperation, saying that cooperation is "as if" people have passed a contract-but since they didn't, why should it be so? To evolutionary thinkers, the puzzle of the missing contract is immediately reminiscent of the puzzle of the missing "designer" of life-forms, a puzzle that Darwin's theory of natural selection essentially resolved. Evolutionary and contractualist theory originally intersected at the work of philosophers John Rawls and David Gauthier, who argued that moral judgments are based on a sense of fairness that has been naturally selected. In this book, Nicolas Baumard further explores the theory that morality was originally an adaptation to the biological market of cooperation, an arena in which individuals competed to be selected for cooperative interactions. In this environment, Baumard suggests, the best strategy was to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation in a fair way, so that those who offered less than others were left out of cooperation while those who offered more were exploited by their partners. It is with this evolutionary approach that Baumard ultimately accounts for the specific structure of human morality. (shrink)

Nicolas Weill propose une lecture stimulante de ces textes qui constituent une des découvertes philosophiques les plus importantes de ces dernières années. La publication des "Cahiers" redonne une actualité brûlante à la question qui divise épigones et détracteurs du penseur allemand : comment continuer à philosopher avec Heidegger sans tenir compte d'une éventuelle contamination de cette philosophie par l'idéologie nazie? Par une analyse sans concession des "Cahiers", en se concentrant sur les Réflexions (tenues par Heidegger de 1931 à 1941) mais (...) tout en cherchant à en dégager les éléments proprement philosophiques, cet ouvrage invite à une approche équilibrée, quitte à "penser avec Heidegger, contre Heidegger", comme le suggérait Jürgen Habermas dès le début des années 1950. Il montre notamment comment l'auteur d'Etre et temps, en inventant une nouvelle forme de philosopher, a poursuivi et prolongé dans ces carnets la critique de la modernité telle qu'elle a été formulée par la "révolution conservatrice" allemande et par Oswald Spengler, le théoricien du déclin de l'Occident. (shrink)

La philosophie hegelienne de la nature est le lieu singulier ou convergent la conscience scientifique moderne et la metaphysique pour fusionner en un moment inedit dans l'histoire de la pensee. Car nous opposons toujours d'une certaine maniere "theorie scientifique" et "discours philosophique", il nous est impossible de saisir la nature de la pensee de Hegel. L'auteur nous livre une interpretation de la mecanique de l'Encyclopedie des sciences philosophiques (1830) qui degage la pensee de Hegel des reductions kantienne et romantique. L'enracinement (...) du discours hegelien dans la conscience scientifique moderne est a la mesure des tensions qu'il entretient avec la science des modernes. La critique qu'opere Hegel de celle-ci n'est comprehensible qu'au regard de sa lecture de la Physique d'Aristote comme modele accompli du rapport entre philosophie et science empirique. Loin de se contenter d'une critique des sciences de son temps, Hegel nous engage dans la voie d'une theorie explicative du mouvement. (shrink)

Urban animals can benefit from living in cities, but this also makes them vulnerable as they increasingly depend on the advantages of urban life. This article has two aims. First, I provide a detailed analysis of the concept of captivity and explain why it matters to nonhuman animals—because and insofar as many of them have a (non-substitutable) interest in freedom. Second, I defend a surprising implication of the account—pushing the boundaries of the concept while the boundaries of cities and human (...) activities expand. I argue for the existence of the neglected problem of pervasive captivity, of which urban wildlife is an illustration. Many urban animals are confined, controlled and dependent, therefore often captive of expanding urban areas. While I argue that captivity per se is value-neutral, I draw the ethical and policy implications of harmful pervasive captivity. (shrink)

Can animals be agents? Do they want to be free? Can they have meaningful lives? If so, should we change the way we treat them? This paper offers an account of animal agency and of two continuums: between human and nonhuman agency, and between wildness and captivity. It describes how a wide range of human activities impede on animals’ freedom and argues that, in doing so, we deprive a wide range of animals of opportunities to exercise their agency in ways (...) that can give meaning to their lives. (shrink)

For decades, liberal democracy has been extolled as the best system of governance to have emerged out of the long experience of history. Today, such a confident assertion is far from self-evident. Democracy, in crisis across the West, must prove itself. This highly timely volume is both a conceptual and practical guide of impressive scope to the challenges of good governance as the world continues to undergo profound transformation in the coming decades.

World food production is facing exorbitant challenges like climate change, use of resources, population growth, and dietary changes. These, in turn, raise major ethical and political questions, such as how to uphold the right to adequate nutrition, or the right to enact a gastronomic culture and to preserve the conditions to do so. Proposals for utopic solutions vary from vertical farming and lab meat to diets filled with the most fanciful insects and seaweeds. Common to all proposals is a polarized (...) understanding of food and diets, famously captured by Warren Belasco in the contraposition between technological fixes and anthropological fixes. According to the first, technology will deliver clean, just, pleasurable, affordable food; future generations will not need to adjust much of their dietary cultures. According to the second, future generations should dramatically change their dietary habits (what they eat and how they eat it) to achieve a sustainable diet. The two fixes found remarkably distinct perspectives over dietary politics and the ethics of food production and consumption. In this paper we argue that such polarized thinking rests on a misrepresentation of the ontological status of food, which in turn affects the underlying ethical and political issues. Food is a socially constructed object that draws in specific ways on habits, norms, traditions, geographical, and climatic conditions. Although this thesis seems somewhat obvious, its consequences on the ethical and political perspectives on the future of food have not been derived properly. After introducing the issue at stake (¤1), we point out the polarities that characterize food utopias (¤2) and their ontological faults (¤3). We hence suggest that a socio-ontological analysis of food can better deliver the principles for a foundation of food utopias (¤4). (shrink)

Summary In the epistemic frame of the biocultural turn and of the neuroaesthetics, we have developed neurohermeneutics as an approach to literature that aims at contributing to the current debate about the linkage between literary, cognitive and neuroscientific studies, focusing on the relationship between mindbrain processes mirrored in the formal features of the text and the strategies activated by the author in a text in order to guide the reader in imagining, emotionally feeling and cognitively getting meanings out of the (...) literary experience. The aim of the neurohermeneutical approach is to grasp and describe phenomenologically the mirroring process between the two extremes of the literary experience, i.e. the writer’s creative process as it is mirrored in the formal features of the literary work and the reader’s imaginative reconfiguration of the text, and what they share in common. The reader revives the mental imaginative processes of the author by creating his/her unrepeatable individual experiences of the text and subjectively redesigning it in an endless loop of features that trigger the imagination and its creative potential both while writing and by reading literature. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga defends Theological Compatibilism (TC) and Essential- ism about property possession (E). TC is the claim that human freedom to act otherwise and God’s essential omniscience are compatible, while E is the claim that every individual entity whatsoever has a modal profile consisting in having both essential and accidental properties. I purport to show that, if E is assumed in the argument for TC, then the latter leads to a very puzzling upshot. I also intend to show that, even (...) if TC is suitably fixed in order to avoid that upshot, TC is still unconvincing in that it merges into one the de re and the de dicto rendering of ‘human freedom to act otherwise’; I end up by briefly sketching why the two renderings should instead be kept well apart. (shrink)