In recent decades, behavioral sciences have introduced into economic theories of choice the image of weak willed individuals with limited rationality, whose decisions are affected by systematic errors. From here, theorists of libertarian paternalism originate the thesis of the possibility of State interventions that promote citizens’ welfare by conditioning their choices while, at the same time, safeguarding their freedom. The Author asserts that such a public promotion of individual welfare is equivalent to the transformation of the welfare State into a (...) paternalistic State and that its theorists aim to avoid the debate about the conflict between exercising liberty and containing the public expenditure which is necessary to protect social rights. (shrink)

Christoph Andreas Leonhard Creuzer (1768-1844), che dedicherà la propria vita alIa carriera ecclesiastica e aIle attività benefiche, pubblica nel 1793 - ancora giovane ed entusiasta della filosofia - un'opera che suscita un certo scalpore, le Considerazioni scettiche sulla libertà del volere, sulla quale prendono posizione, polernicamente, anche Fichte e Schelling. Pur accogliendo i princlpi della filosofia critica, Creuzer sostiene che l'idea di libertà come autonornia della volontà, quale Kant l'ha definita, conduca nienterneno che alio spinozismo, ossia alia negazione dei concetti (...) di imputazione, merito e colpa. Mascherandosi dietro uno scetticismo di comodo, Creuzer mostra corne tale conclusione spinoziana, a cui Kant ha tentato inutilmente di sottrarsi, sia l'esito obbligato tanto della sua filosofia teoretica quanto di quella pratica, che pure mirava in prima istanza a salvaguardare la responsabilità morale. (shrink)

Che cosa distingue, concettualmente, l’esattore delle tasse che esiga da un uomo, a pena di sanzioni, una determinata somma di denaro, dal bandito che gli intimi, sotto la minaccia di un’arma, di consegnargli la medesima somma? È sul soddisfacimento del requisito della giustizia che si fonda, come sostenne Agostino, l’eterogeneità tra uno Stato e un’accolita di furfanti? «Se non è rispettata la giustizia, che cosa sono gli Stati, se non delle grandi bande di ladri? Perché le bande di briganti che (...) cosa sono, se non dei piccoli Stati?». Il volume ripercorre le risposte più autorevoli fornite nel XX secolo, entro un orizzonte postmetafisico, alla domanda agostiniana: prima dell’avvento del regime nazista, la tesi che un’associazione a delinquere sia indistinguibile da uno Stato è stata sostenuta da Benedetto Croce, Santi Romano e Hans Kelsen; dopo l’esperienza del nazismo e delle sue atrocità, perpetrate in nome dello Stato e della legge, le questioni relative alla natura del diritto e alla relazione tra morale e diritto hanno assunto – come ha osservato Robert Alexy – «l’urgenza di un problema scottante», e la domanda filosofica sulla validità della legge ingiusta è apparsa ineludibile non solo ai maggiori filosofi del diritto (Herbert L.H. Hart, Alf Ross, Ronald Dworkin e lo stesso Alexy), ma alle stesse corti tedesche. (shrink)

In recent decades, behavioral sciences have introduced into economic theories of choice the image of weak willed individuals with limited rationality, whose decisions are affected by systematic errors. From here, theorists of libertarian paternalism originate the thesis of the possibility of State interventions that promote citizens’ welfare by conditioning their choices while, at the same time, safeguarding their freedom. The Author asserts that such a public promotion of individual welfare is equivalent to the transformation of the welfare State into a (...) paternalistic State and that its theorists aim to avoid the debate about the conflict between exercising liberty and containing the public expenditure which is necessary to protect social rights. (shrink)

This article discusses the opposition of neurosciences of moral judgement to moral philosophy, shedding light on the political meaning of the thesis according to which a science of morality is possible, or already real, and would demonstrate that rights’ recognition equates to a cognitive error. It furthermore presents some theoretical contributions offered by Kant’s moral doctrine – on condition that one avoids providing an unfounded and caricatural account in order to make it the paradigm of armchair philosophy – about the (...) role of intuition and reasoning in formulating moral judgements and of mental experiments on moral dilemmas. (shrink)

In the contemporary debate on artificial morality, the trolley problem has found a new field of application, in the “ethics of crashes” with self-driving cars. The paper aims to show that the trolley dilemma is out of place, in the context of automated traffic, not only with regard to the object of the dilemma (which human being should be sacrificed, in crashes with inevitable fatal consequences), but also with regard to the subject to whom it is up to decide. In (...) States whose constitutional charters protect fundamental individual rights, laws contain definite constraints on solving dilemmas regarding self-driving cars. The idea that crashes of self-driving cars pose extraordinary moral questions, rather than safety, transparency, caution and control issues, as any other machine, derives perhaps from the human inclination to consider anthropomorphic objects as agents, or even as moral agents. The development of autonomous machines can lead to believe that three crowdsourcing and subrogation operations, variously intertwined, are possible and allowed: of law with ethics, in the first place; of moral evaluation, secondly, with a computational model of aggregated social preferences and, finally, of human moral agency with the autonomous, unpredictable and opaque functioning of machines. (shrink)

Sono prese in esame – attraverso le opere pubblicate, ma anche attraverso le lezioni e le riflessioni – tre questioni centrali nell’etica di Kant: lo spessore teorico, e le modificazioni, dei concetti di virtù e di felicità, nonché le maniere con cui Kant tentò di armonizzarli, nell’idea di sommo bene. La filosofia morale di Kant è presentata non come un sistema compiuto una volta per tutte, bensì come un ragionare in lotta con il proprio oggetto. L’autrice mostra – presentando una (...) ricostruzione sorprendente delle vicende dell’etica di Kant nel decennio successivo alla Critica della ragion pratica– come Kant si trovò costretto, per difficoltà teoriche, a mutare la propria dottrina su tutti e tre i temi, collocandoli, di volta in volta, entro una nuova struttura globale. L’evoluzione del concetto di felicità è riconosciuta dalla Kantforschung; l’analisi dei mutamenti del concetto di dovere etico e dell’idea di sommo bene costituisce un contributo originale dell’autrice. L’excursus sulla nascita del concetto di eudemonismo mostra come il termine – contrariamente a quanto si sostiene correntemente – non sia stato coniato da Kant.L’interpretazione del libro di Kant su La religione contrasta con le tendenze di gran lunga dominanti negli studi kantiani. -/- The concepts of virtue and happiness, and the ways Kant tried to combine them in the idea of the highest good, are examined with regard not only to Kant’s published works, but also to his lectures and reflections. The story of the changes in Kant’s ethic – particularly about the reality of the highest good and God’s existence – and the excursus on the birth of the concept of eudemonism give an original contribution to Kantforschung. (shrink)

Leading philosophical models of curiosity represent it as a desiderative attitude whose content is a question, and which is satisfied by knowledge of the answer to that question. I argue that these models do not capture the distinctive character of a form of curiosity that I call 'erotic curiosity'. Erotic curiosity addresses itself not to a question but to an object whose significance for the inquirer is affective as well as epistemic. This form of curiosity is best understood by analogy (...) to erotic love as theorized by Plato in the Symposium. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen the facilitation of unconventional or even extraordinary reproductive endeavours. Sperm has been harvested from dying or deceased men at the request of their wives; reproductive tissue has been surgically removed from children at the request of their parents; deceased adults’ frozen embryos have been claimed by their parents, in order to create grandchildren; wombs have been transplanted from mothers to their daughters. What is needed for requests to be honoured by healthcare staff is that they align (...) with widely shared expectations about what people’s reproductive potential ought to be, what marital relationships ought to result in, and which kinds of ties are desirable between parents and children. Costly and invasive technologies are not considered excessive when they are used to support the building of appropriate families. However, deviations from dominant reproductive norms, even if technologically simple and convenient to the participants, are unlikely to receive support. In this paper, we offer examples of such deviations and explore their implications. If reproduction is important as a way of creating genetic relationships, should reproductive material in storage be offered to genetic relatives other than the people from whom it originated? And if parents are allowed to have reproductive material collected from their offspring, or even to use it to create babies, should offspring likewise be allowed to use their parents’ reproductive material? We tackle these questions and suggest ways in which interests in genetic ties could be operationalised in a more coherent and less-invasive manner than they currently are. (shrink)

The present article is devoted to a logical treatment of some fundamental concepts involved in responsibility attribution. We specify a theoretical framework based on a language of temporal deontic logic with agent-relative operators for deliberate causal contribution. The framework is endowed with a procedure to solve normative conflicts which arise from the assessment of different normative sources. We provide a characterization result for a basic system within this framework and illustrate how the concepts formalized can be put at work in (...) the analysis of examples of legal reasoning. (shrink)

In this book, Gobetti combines political theory with the history of political thought to question the conceptual conventions and tacit assumptions which surround the concepts of private and public. In seeking the foundations of the modern liberal conception of private and public, she traces it to modern Natural Law thinkers, in particular Locke and Hutcheson. By developing a revised interpretation of 17th century natural jurisprudence, which recognizes that every adult controls an individual or private domain, as well as engaging in (...) political, community or public interaction, Gobetti raises interesting questions about the politics of participation in modern society. (shrink)

Die "Consolatio philosophiae" von Boethius war im Mittelalter ausserordentlich verbreitet. Als eines der wichtigsten Werke der mittelalterlichen Ethik und zugleich Schullektüre wurde sie häufig kommentiert und in die Volkssprachen übertragen. Die in MS. Hamilton 46 der Bodleian Library, Oxford, überlieferte, 1465 abgefasste Übersetzung ist eine von insgesamt vier noch erhaltenen deutschsprachigen Versionen der Trostschrift, die in der 2. Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts unabhängig voneinander entstanden sind. Nur im Oxforder Codex wird die deutsche Übersetzung mit ihrer lateinischen Vorlage samt lateinischer Glossen (...) überliefert. Dadurch ist eine einzigartige Grundlage gegeben, von der aus die Arbeitsweise und Intention des Übersetzers genau untersucht werden kann. In der vorliegenden Publikation wird der Boethius-Text der Hamiltoner Handschrift, der sich aus Grund-, Paratext und deutscher Übersetzung zusammensetzt und im Original nur sehr schwer zu lesen ist, zum ersten Mal in Form einer wissenschaftlichen Edition und Studie zugänglich gemacht. Der synoptischen Edition des lateinischen Basistextes samt vielschichtiger Glossen und der deutschen Fassung folgen ein vergleichender Kommentar und zwei Glossare, welche jeweils Übersetzungstechniken und Wortschatz eingehend erschliessen. Der Edition vorausgeschickt ist eine Studie, die sich mit der Sprache und Provenienz der Übertragung, ihrem Entstehungs- und Verwendungskontext, ihrer Stellung innerhalb der deutschen "Consolatio"-Tradition, ihrer Abhängigkeit vom lateinischen Text und den Glossen, mit dem lateinischen Grund- und Paratext sowie den unterschiedlichen Textherstellungsphasen detailliert befasst."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

It is widely believed that we ought not to criticize others for wrongs that we ourselves have committed. The author draws out and challenges some of the background assumptions about the practice of criticism that underlie our attraction to this claim, such as the tendency to think of criticism either as a social sanction or as a didactic intervention. The author goes on to offer a taxonomy of cases in which the moral legitimacy of criticism is challenged on the grounds (...) that the critic him- or herself engages in the behavior that he or she criticizes in others. The author argues that, in each type of case, the would-be critics should not constrain their participation in moral discourse on the grounds that they are not themselves innocent of the wrongdoing they criticize in others. (shrink)

O presente estudo objetivou analisar a questão da educação feminina, enfatizando a trajetória da mulher na ampliação das oportunidades educacionais e sociais através da profissionalização do Magistério representado pelo Instituto de Educação Régis Pacheco na cidade de Jequié/BA, verificando as transformações ideológicas e sociais que ocorreram no modelo educacional do Brasil e a relação estabelecida entre mulher/educação/curso normal, em meados do Século XIX e Século XX. Abordamos a educação feminina como experiência e prática social histórica que se constitui na necessidade (...) de uma realização pessoal que permita a ascensão da mulher do espaço privado para o público através do exercício da docência. Tratamos da profissionalização do magistério enquanto oportunidade de liberdade e autonomia financeira das mulheres/professoras do Instituto de Educação Régis Pacheco e as contribuições que o processo educacional trouxe para estas professoras. Apresentamos as trajetórias de duas mulheres/professoras, reconhecendo a importância de perceber a história das mulheres através do ponto de vista de quem de fato, faz parte desse processo histórico. (shrink)

I-Language introduces the uninitiated to linguistics as cognitive science. In an engaging, down-to-earth style Daniela Isac and Charles Reiss give a crystal-clear demonstration of the application of the scientific method in linguistic theory. Their presentation of the research programme inspired and led by Noam Chomsky shows how the focus of theory and research in linguistics shifted from treating language as a disembodied, human-external entity to cognitive biolinguistics - the study of language as a human cognitive system embedded within the (...) mind/brain of each individual. The recurring theme of equivalence classes in linguistic computation ties together the presentation of material from phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. The same theme is used to help students understand the place of linguistics in the broader context of the cognitive sciences, by drawing on examples from vision, audition, and even animal cognition.This textbook is unique in its integration of empirical issues of linguistic analysis, engagement with philosophical questions that arise in the study of language, and treatment of the history of the field. Topics ranging from allophony to reduplication, ergativity, and negative polarity are invoked to show the implications of findings in cognitive biolinguistics for philosophical issues like reference, the mind-body problem, and nature-nurture debates.This textbook contains numerous exercises and guides for further reading as well as ideas for student projects. A companion website with guidance for instructors and answers to the exercises features a series of pdf slide presentations to accompany the teaching of each topic. (shrink)

Who is a child’s father? Is it the man who raised her, or the one whose genes she carries—or both? We look at the view that men who have raised children they falsely believed to be ‘their own’ have been victims of a form of fraud or are ‘false fathers’. We consider the question of who has been harmed in such cases, and in what the harm consists. We use conceptual analysis, a philosophical method of investigating the use of a (...) concept and the logical implications of its various interpretations. We devise and discuss a number of possible scenarios in which a couple (arguably) become the parents of a child. We use these scenarios to illustrate the tenuousness of the claim that we can simply rely on biology to clarify parent-child relationships. We also discuss some of the underpinnings and implications of the language in which the debate on ‘paternity fraud’ has been framed: ‘duped’ or ‘false’ fathers and ‘cuckoo children’. (shrink)

Internationally, there is considerable inconsistency in the recognition and regulation of children's genetic connections outside the family. In the context of gamete and embryo donation, challenges for regulation seem endless. In this paper, I review some of the paths that have been taken to manage children' being closely genetically related to people outside their families. I do so against the background of recognising the importance of children's interests as moral status holders. I look at recent qualitative research involving donor-conceived people (...) and borrow their own words to make sense of a purported interest to know (of) their close genetic ties. I also review ways in which gamete donation may have facilitated new kinds of kinship, which are at the same time genetic and chosen. In short, in this paper, I explore what meaning there could be in genetic connections that is not about parenthood. Further, I argue that the focus on parenthood in previous work in this area may be detrimental to appreciating some of the goods that can be derived from close genetic connections. (shrink)

This paper explores a distinctive form of social interaction—interpersonal inquiry—in which two or more people attempt to understand one another by engaging in conversation. Like many modes of inquiry into human beings, interpersonal inquiry partly shapes its own objects. How we conduct it thus affects who we become. I present an ethical ideal of conversation to which, I argue, at least some of our interpersonal inquiry ought to aspire. I then consider how this ideal might influence philosophical conceptions of the (...) self. (shrink)

Even though co‐parenthood is one of the most significant close personal relationships that people can have, there is relatively little philosophical work on the moral duties that co‐parents owe each other. This may be due to the increasingly questionable assumption, still common in our societies, that co‐parenthood arises naturally from marriage or romantic coupledom and thus that commitment to a co‐parent evolves from a commitment to a marital or romantic partner. In this article, we argue that co‐parenthood should be seen (...) as a relationship in its own right, which generates specific moral duties. Co‐parents should come to explicit agreements with each other regarding the most important areas of potential conflict between them. Such agreements may have to be renegotiated over time. We explore some possible non‐negotiable co‐parental duties such as the duties not to alienate the child from the other parent(s) and not to trap a co‐parent in a particularly vulnerable situation. We consider some legal and societal implications of our argument and, finally, suggest some pragmatic benefits of our proposal. (shrink)

In this brief text we look at one instance of how gender norms continue to inform institutional treatment of parents regarding care for children: specifically, at how the exercise of fathers’ responsibilities for their children can be discouraged or altogether blocked.

Care este statutul moral al copiilor? Ce înseamnă egalitatea morală dintre copii şi adulți? Care sunt constrângerile pe care le impune acceptarea acestei egalități în ceea ce priveşte felul în care pot fi tratați copiii în familie sau în societate ? Cine are ce fel de responsabilitate pentru copii ? În capitolul de față voi discuta astfel de întrebări. Voi analiza relația dintre copii, părinți şi stat, în dimensiunea ei practică (felul în care ne raportăm la copii), din punct de (...) vedere legal (constrângerile legale asupra felului în care ne raportăm la copii) şi din punct de vedere moral (cum ar trebui să ne raportăm la copii). Voi începe cu o scurtă incursiune în istoria relațiilor dintre copii, părinți, şi stat, atât din punct de vedere legal, cât şi filosofic. Voi prezenta conceptul de statut moral şi ideea de egalitate morală între copii şi adulți. Voi ilustra schimbările sociale şi legislative în ce priveşte acceptarea statutului moral al copiilor şi a egalității morale între copii şi adulți, folosind exemple din România şi Suedia. Voi examina dinamica dintre aspirațiile legale şi morale la care aderă România în ce priveşte statutul moral al copiilor şi normele sociale despre copii, copilărie, şi familie, care nu sunt întotdeauna în acord cu aceste aspirații. Voi urmări apoi schimbările care au avut loc în ultimele decenii în ce priveşte limitele responsabilității parentale. (shrink)

In normative reasoning one typically refers to intervals of time across which norms are intended to hold, as well as to alternative possibilities representing hypothetical developments of a given scenario. Thus, deontic modalities are naturally intertwined with temporal and metaphysical ones. Furthermore, contemporary debates in philosophy suggest that a proper understanding of fundamental ethical principles, such as the Ought-Implies-Can thesis, requires a simultaneous analysis of these three families of concepts. In the present article we propose a general formal framework which (...) allows for fine-grained multimodal reasoning in the normative domain. We provide an axiomatization for a novel system of propositional logic encoding the way in which possibilities and norms arising from different sources change over intervals of time. The usefulness of our framework is illustrated by analysing an ancient and particularly challenging `cold case', the Paradox of the Court. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} This article aims to examine the phenomenon of social services in post-1989 Romania, underscoring the role of the religious factor in the establishment and operation of nongovernmental organisations active in the area of family and child protection/child welfare. The results are based on empirical data collected from interviews with representatives (...) of NGO-s in Iaşi that correspond to the profile of faith-based organisations and which have been included in the list of accredited providers of social services. We used an assessment grid that allowed us to highlight a number of specific characteristics to the Romanian space, found among faith-based organisations involved in the development of social and medical services. One direction that Romanian organisation took was to dilute in time the religious message and to secularise their practices under the influence of the Orthodox majority, as well as following the requirements imposed by secular donors and especially by public ones. The channelling of private resources donated to religious cults predominantly towards building and restoring establishments (churches, monasteries) rather than towards the development of social faith-based programmes aimed at vulnerable populations has caused in faith-based organisations a high level of dependency on secular donors. The process in which the practices and the discourse are secularised is accompanied by a trend towards the fragmentation of the Christian-based civil society. (shrink)