Until the issue of Altheim's book Roemische Religionsgeschichte there was little doubt about the correctness of Wissowa's view that the two groups of the diindigetes and the di novensides combined with each other represent the whole of theRoman pantheon, the di indigetes being the old, indigenous deities of the Roman people, inherited so to speak from the days of Romulus, the di novensides the new deities, imported in historical times from foreign peoples. This view has now been abandoned, owing to (...) Altheim's arguments. Besides this, Altheim and later C. Koch have proved that the proximity of the expressions divi novensiles and di indigetes in Livy's report about the devotio of P. Decius Mus does not in itself justify the conclusion that the di indigetes and the di novensides are linked together in such a manner that the solution of the problem of one group involves that of the other. Hence the questions arise, first, what is the nature of the di novensides or of the di indigetes, and whether either of these questions has been satisfactorily answered; secondly, is it possible to establish any relationship between these two groups of deities, and can such a relation be usedas a starting-point from which to investigate the nature of the other group? In choosing this line of research it seems to me that an attempt to solve the problem of the novensides rather than that of the indigetes promises greater success. I shall, therefore, treat the di novensides in the first part of this paper. (shrink)

Ce nouvel opus de la collection Les écrits de Plotin a été rédigé en italien par A. Linguiti, puis traduit en français par A.C. Peduzzi, la traduction française du texte grec de Plotin ayant naturellement été vérifiée par A. Linguiti. Les citations de Plotin extraites d’autres traités (dans l’Introduction et le Commentaire) sont données dans la traduction d’Émile Bréhier. Ce travail, en grande partie inédit, bénéficie de recherches déjà publiées par A. Linguiti dans un ouvrage plus volumineux...

Body feedback is the proprioceptive feedback that denominates the afferent information from position and movement of the body to the central nervous system. It is crucial in experiencing emotions, in forming attitudes and in regulating emotions and behavior. This paper investigates effects of dynamic body feedback on affect and attitudes, focusing on the impact of movement rhythms with smooth vs. sharp reversals as one basic category of movement qualities. It relates those qualities to already explored effects of approach vs. avoidance (...) motor behavior as one basic category of movement shape. Studies 1 and 2 tested the effects of one of two basic movement qualities (smooth vs. sharp rhythms) on affect and cognition. The third study tested those movement qualities in combination with movement shape (approach vs. avoidance motor behavior) and the effects of those combinations on affect and attitudes toward initially valence-free stimuli. Results suggest that movement rhythms influence affect (studies 1 and 2), and attitudes (study 3), and moderate the impact of approach and avoidance motor behavior on attitudes (study 3). Extending static body feedback research with a dynamic account, findings indicate that movement qualities – next to movement shape – play an important role, when movement of the lived body is an independent variable. (shrink)

Recently, there have been attempts at offering new justifications of the Rawlsian idea of public reason. Blain Neufeld has suggested that the ideal of political autonomy justifies public reason, while R.J. Leland and Han van Wietmarschen have sought to justify the idea by appealing to the value of political community. In this paper, I show that both proposals are vulnerable to a common problem. In realistic circumstances, they will often turn into reasons to oppose, rather than support, public reason. However, (...) this counterintuitive result can be avoided if we conceive of autonomy and community differently. (shrink)

Linguistic interventions aim to change our linguistic practices. A commonly discussed type of linguistic intervention is meaning revision, which seeks to associate existing words with new or revised meanings. But why does retaining old words matter so much? Why not instead introduce new words to express the newly defined meanings? Drawing on relevant psycholinguistic research, this paper develops an empirically motivated, general, and practically useful pro tanto reason to retain rather than replace the original word during the process of conceptual (...) improvement. (shrink)

What exactly do we need to do in order to make a promise, or to exercise some other normative power? On a view relied on by many philosophers writing on promising, consent, and related phenomena, the answer is that we must communicate a suitable kind of intention. On this view, power-conferring principles assert that specific normative consequences, determined in part by the content of the communicated intention, attach to such communicative acts, and these principles need not be socially practised or (...) accepted to be true. The paper offers a defense of this convention-independent view against the forceful challenge developed by Jed Lewinsohn in ‘The “Natural Unintelligibility” of Normative Powers’. Lewinsohn appeals to action-theoretic considerations to show that the relevant type of communicative act could not be performed under conditions of rationality and full information, and that therefore promissory power and other normative powers require the existence of social rules conferring such powers. The defense of the view targeted by Lewinsohn turns partly on the exact content of plausible constraints on the intelligibility of actions done with a particular aim, and partly on the question just how the social acceptance of power-conferring rules should be thought to matter. (shrink)

There has been no informed or honest debate in North America over the issue of liberalized euthanasia. Despite thousands of newspaper stories, scores of learned academic articles, a handful of closely analyzed legal decisions, and hours of broadcast news and talk show imagery, a full discussion is yet to begin.

The world of disability theory is currently divided between those who insist it reflects a physical fact affecting life quality and those who believe disability is defined by social prejudice. Despite a dialogue spanning bioethical, medical and social scientific literatures the differences between opposing views remains persistent. The result is similar to a figure-ground paradox in which one can see only part of a picture at any moment. This paper attempts to find areas of commonality between the opposing camps, and (...) thus to rearrange the figures of the paradox at a fundamental level. The purpose is first to identify areas in which common ground can be achieved, and secondarily, to clarify the areas in which disagreement continues. While a general and unified theory of physical difference/disability is beyond the scope of this paper the result may advance that general goal. (shrink)

Résumé Les affinités paradoxales que la recherche a pu pointer entre la « secte » philosophique épicurienne et la secte chrétienne dans les premiers siècles de notre ère sont rappelées puis examinées dans le détail du premier document attestant une rencontre précise entre les deux sectes, le récit des Actes des Apôtres qui montre Paul discutant avec les Épicuriens et les Stoïciens d’Athènes, puis nous restitue le discours de Paul devant l’Aréopage d’Athènes. Il apparaît que Paul se pose en philosophe (...) pour exposer sa doctrine en des termes jusqu’à un certain point compatibles avec une doctrine matérialiste voire polythéiste. (shrink)

Recently developed large language models (LLMs) perform surprisingly well in many language-related tasks, ranging from text correction or authentic chat experiences to the production of entirely new texts or even essays. It is natural to get the impression that LLMs know the meaning of natural language expressions and can use them productively. Recent scholarship, however, has questioned the validity of this impression, arguing that LLMs are ultimately incapable of understanding and producing meaningful texts. This paper develops a more optimistic view. (...) Drawing on classic externalist accounts of reference, it argues that LLM-generated texts meet the conditions of successful reference. This holds at least for proper names and so-called paradigm terms. The key insight here is that the LLM may inherit reference from its training-data through a reference-sustaining training mechanism. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION In ita original form the present paper was presented to the American Mathematical Society, April 2k,, as a companion piece to the writer's ...

The vital status of patients who are a part of controlled donation after circulatory death (cDCD) is widely debated in bioethical literature. Opponents to currently applied cDCD protocols argue that they violate the dead donor rule, while proponents of the protocols advocate compatibility. In this article, we argue that both parties often misinterpret the moral implications of the dead donor rule. The rule as such does not require an assessment of a donor’s vital status, we contend, but rather an assessment (...) of whether procurement of organs in cDCD cause the death of the donor or not. We then argue that commonly practiced cDCD protocols do not violate the dead donor rule, since the donation does not trigger or cause the death of the donors. (shrink)

The introduction of normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) in controlled donation after circulatory determination of death (cDCDD) protocols is by some regarded as controversial and ethically troublesome. One of the main concerns that opponents have about introducing NRP in cDCDD protocols is that reestablishing circulation will negate the determination of death by circulatory criteria, potentially resuscitating the donor. In this article, I argue that this is not the case. If we take a closer look at the concept of death underlying the (...) circulatory criterion for determination of death, we find that the purpose of the criterion is to show whether the organism as a whole has died. I argue that this purpose is fulfilled by the circulatory criterion in cDCDD protocols, and that applying NRP does not negate the determination of death or resuscitate the donor. (shrink)

It seems natural to think that Carnapian explication and experimental philosophy can go hand in hand. But what exactly explicators can gain from the data provided by experimental philosophers remains controversial. According to an influential proposal by Shepherd and Justus, explicators should use experimental data in the process of ‘explication preparation’. Against this proposal, Mark Pinder has recently suggested that experimental data can directly assist an explicator’s search for fruitful replacements of the explicandum. In developing his argument, he also proposes (...) a novel aspect of what makes a concept fruitful, namely, that it is taken up by the relevant community. In this paper, I defend explication preparation against Pinder’s objections and argue that his uptake proposal conflates theoretical and practical success conditions of explications. Furthermore, I argue that Pinder’s suggested experimental procedure needs substantial revision. I end by distinguishing two kinds of explication projects, and showing how experimental philosophy can contribute to each of them. (shrink)

In this paper, we first briefly survey the main responses to the challenge that experimental philosophy poses to the method of cases, given the common assumption that the latter is crucially based on intuitive judgments about cases. Second, we discuss two of the most popular responses in more detail: the expertise defense and the mischaracterization objection. Our take on the expertise defense is that the available empirical data do not support the claim that professional philosophers enjoy relevant expertise in their (...) intuitive judgments about cases. In contrast, the mischaracterization objection seems considerably more promising than its largely negative reception has suggested. We argue that the burden of proof is thus on philosophers who still hold that the method of cases crucially relies on intuitive judgments about cases. Finally, we discuss whether conceptual engineering provides an alternative to the method of cases in light of the challenge from experimental philosophy. We argue that this is not clearly the case, because conceptual engineering also requires descriptive information about the concepts it aims to improve. However, its primarily normative perspective on our concepts makes it largely orthogonal to the challenge from experimental philosophy, and it can also benefit from the empirical methods of the latter. (shrink)

To those defining euthanasia as a battle for the principle of self-determination, persons seeking physician assisted death (PAD) are soldiers in the fight for patient autonomy. The reasons they seek it, or the potential of other, non-life-threatening interventions is less important than this principle: individuals have the right not only to choose death (suicide), but to be assisted in dying. They should not be second guessed or denied on the basis of another's distaste for that decision. This paper offers a (...) general review of deaths attributed to Dr. Jack Kevorkian's PAD practice in an attempt to answer two questions: Why do persons seek physician assisted death, and, to what extent does induced death seem, in retrospect, a reasonable and perhaps necessary medical response to specific patient complaints? (shrink)

The acceptance of military directives violating medical ethics and international covenants encouraged by the demonisation of the enemy by the US president in 2002 has effectively removed the right of medical personnel to refuse participation in internationally proscribed actionsMedicine and its traditional ethic of care is today a victim of the current conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, its uniquely humanising mission rejected by US President George W Bush and his advisors. In denying the applicability of international agreements guaranteeing medicine’s ecumenical (...) role in this conflict they have transformed medicine into just another weapon of tactical significance. The result, predictable in retrospect, has been to make military physicians and nurses complicit—actively or passively—in what Litton calls an “atrocity-producing situation”, resulting in detainee or prisoner abuse.1From the first revelations of detainee torture in US detention camps to recent allegations of continued abuse , the focus of international attention has shifted from the US prosecution of low ranking, non-commissioned military personnel to the context in which the atrocities they committed occurred. “No one up the chain of command has ever been held accountable for what is in these horrifying images,” Center for Constitutional Rights Director Bill Goodman said of recently published photographs of 2004 prisoner torture and abuse.2 “The situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture,” said the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture following a 2006 investigation.3The denial of international law and convention involved the overt disavowal of covenants and conventions that for almost 150 years required medical personnel in the US military to act within the guidelines of a Hippocratic vision of medicine. To understand how fundamental this change has been requires a brief review of the history of medicine’s previously protected status and then a description of …. (shrink)

Henry Sedgewick's The Methods of Ethics challenges comparison, as no other work in moral philosophy, with Aristotle's Ethics in the depth of its understanding of practical rationality, and in its architectural coherence it rivals the work of Kant. In this historical, rather than critical study, Professor Schneewind shows how Sidgewick's arguments and conclusions represent rational developments of the work of Sidgewick's predecessors, and brings out the nature and structure of the reasoning underlying his position.

A question between John Harris and I is the degree to which lessons may be learned, and insights gained, from a life distinguished by physical differences. He argues it as the “aborting Beethoven fallacy”, I insist on the evidence that what we learn from physical differences may be critical and life enhancing.

The dissertation examines the strategy of critical legitimation operative in contemporary social and political theory. Its primary thesis is that the historical emergence of critical discourse must be understood within the context of two events of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: the philosophical encounter with the rise of modern natural science, and the formation of a bourgeois intellectual elite and its essentially moral opposition to the absolutist state. These events produce a strategy of critical legitimation that combines the (...) vocabularies of mathematical objectivity and juridical normativity. ;This thesis is defended through a reading of several texts of Kant and Hegel, wherein two modes of the strategy are discerned. In Kant there is found the strategy of expropriation, or the iterative acquisition of the object of discourse, whilst in Hegel one finds a strategy of appropriation or systematic acquisition. Both modes serve to constitute the various forms of critical discourse in their specific theorization of the objects and themes of social and political inquiry. (shrink)

The critical role of surrogates—commonly if erroneously called “Informal caregivers”—has been generally ignored by clinical and bioethical literatures. While assumed to provide no more than ancillary support, these patient representatives directly or indirectly affect patient care to the extent they inhibit or facilitate both home-based care and patient decisions regarding treatment alternatives. Members of this group include relatives and neighbors who may or may not act in consort as advisors, assistants, care providers, and surrogate decisionmakers acting on the patient's behalf (...) with members of the medical community. Not only do they often possess a critical voice strongly influencing both patient care decisions and, after discharge, home care and rehabilitation, this paper argues they do so from a perspective that is often radically different from one endorsed by medical professionals. (shrink)

Although space limitations do not permit including all the responses received after the passing of David Thomasma, some representative expressions are included below. As these remembrances attest, Edmund Pellegrino spoke for all of us when he said at David's memorial service, “It has been said that we die only when forgotten; if so, David will live a long time. He remains a presence for his family, friends, collaborators, and all who met him.”.

In a special issue of this journal, a range of authors addressed the critical problem of difference in bioethics. To what extent do class, culture, ethnicity, and race affect the ethical decisions that patients and professionals must make in a medical context? Those arguing for an understanding of cultural influences in bioethical decisionmakingtypically argue from the perspective of individual case studies to demonstrate the importance of these social constructs. Others, like Erika Blacksher, however, worry that this approach will obscure the (...) uniqueness of individual decisionmakng patterns, allowing all persons of a single group to be aggregated as if their class, cultural construct, or religious affiliation were the single motive element in their medicolegal decisionmaking. There is, she cautions, a risk of misuse if a professional care provider reflexively assumes individual patient or surrogate reactions on the basis of ethnicity or culture. (shrink)

A recent issue of CambridgeQuarterlyofHealthcareEthics provides a fascinating look into the uncertainties surrounding the subject of human cloning. As Nelkin and Lindee point out, for example, the popular assumption is that this technology will lead to individual immortality. life everlasting for the deserving.considers the use of cloning for the replication of human individuals to be ethically unacceptable.”.