Scientific normativity, one of the contentious issues in the philosophy of science, warrants thorough exploration to situate the epistemic role of the norms governing methodological choices in science. This paper endeavors to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of it by using Lewis' account of convention. The attempt is to develop a social conventional framework for scientific normativity. It is an epistemological framework that recognizes scientific norms governing methodological choices as social conventions. These social conventions are arrived at by appealing to (...) the values, goals, desires, and assumptions that characterize the sociality of the situation in which they emerge. We argue for a pluralistic notion of scientific normativity without being dismissive of the universalists’ central concerns. (shrink)

The Catholic Church is not opposed to space travel and exploration. On the contrary, it has always supported space projects, encouraging research on space stations and even considering the possibility of building new settlements on other planets. However, it maintains a principled position against assisted reproduction because, from its perspective, such practices always involve: (a) the destruction of human embryos; (b) the separation of the unitive act from the procreative one; (c) encouraging eugenic practices. In our view, this means that (...) the Catholic Church cannot truly support a position in favor of human expansion into space (building new settlements and making other planets habitable), as such a policy could only be based on reproduction. In this article, however, we argue that space travel also presents another important issue for Catholics. If reproduction in space can only occur through asssted reproductive technologies, then Catholics should not have children. Therefore, it is legitimate to ask whether, from the perspective of the Catholic Church, the moral value of exploration and expansion in space can always prevail over the value of reproduction. Our conclusion will be that the answer depends on the kind of value one wants to assign to space missions. (shrink)

This paper takes issue with Córdoba’s (Axiomathes 27(5):521–529, 2017) attempt to axiomatize praxeology, with the particular target being his ultimate derivation of the Scarcity Theorem. This author starts with proving the Uneasiness Theorem, a proof we find flawless. It is indeed the case that action entails wanting something, from which it follows – by contraposition – that being satisfied (i.e. not wanting anything) entails no action. That much must be granted. However, we consider the author’s alleged proof of the Scarcity (...) Theorem wanting. Specifically, what we find unpersuasive is Córdoba’s premise (9) having it that if there is nothing that is scarce for _a_ (some arbitrary economic agent), then _a_ is satisfied and therefore _a_ does not (and cannot) act. On Córdoba’s own definition of scarcity, scarcity is a _relational_ property. To wit, a certain resource is scarce for _a_ when it does not suffice to satisfy _a_’s multiple ends. But then, while sticking to this definition, we envisage a situation wherein nothing is scarce for _a_ (relative to his ends). It seems that even under this scenario, the economic actor may _not_ be satisfied _just yet_ (say, at time t 1 ). Yet, he may start sequentially employing his adequate means to satisfy his ends, thus obeying the law of diminishing marginal utility with both his desires and beliefs issuing in the purposeful behavior in question, nothing short of action proper. If our thought experiments counts for something, it shows that scarcity is just a contingent – _pace_ Mises (Human action, 4th edn. Fox & Wilkes, San Francisco, p. 70, 1949) and Córdoba – rather than a necessary condition of action. (shrink)

What is the role played by mechanisms in medical reasoning? In this paper, we provide an inferential study of the use of mechanisms in medical reasoning. Medical reasoning includes clinical reasoning and biomedical research reasoning. It is not conceived in terms of a specific form of inference, but as a complex form of reasoning involving abductions, deductions, and inductions. This methodology sheds a new light on the notion of mechanistic evidence, which has been the object of a regain of interest (...) in recent literature, but which remains unclearly defined. We claim that “mechanistic evidence” is ambiguous: it can mean “evidence of a mechanism” or “mechanism as evidence”. Then, two main groups of medical reasoning can be identified: inference _to_ mechanisms and inference _from_ mechanisms. This serves as a basis to distinguish between factual evidence and the more pragmatic notion of evidence as reasons to accept a claim. In this context, we assess the role of mechanisms in the process of producing evidence. (shrink)

Throughout, the paper examines the concept of the unexpected. Heraclitus, Kostas Axelos, and Bernard Stiegler are invoked to decipher the impossible-possibility encapsulated in Heraclitus’ Fragment 18. The term ‘unhoped-for’ signifies the ‘un-passable’ or ‘un-traversable,’ akin to an insurmountable enigma. Aporia, or a difficult-to-resolve impasse, is associated with this sense. The unexpected challenges all expectations, revealing the hidden truth within aporia. The ‘methodology’ to transcend the aporon echoes Heidegger’s pursuit as Being tends toward self-concealment. This exploration urges us to consider the (...) utterly unforeseen and discover possibilities in the impossible itself, emphasizing the need to be radically open to the as-yet undiscovered. With this in mind, the paper considers Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of absolute deterritorialization, the question of utopia, and engages with an array of contemporary continental thinkers to highlight the transformative potential of crisis, exhaustion, and uncertainty. The image of the spiral is invoked as a metaphor for the creativity inherent in thought itself. (shrink)

The paper attempts to clarify a fundamental similarity and some relevant differences between empirical-scientific and fictional thought experiments. For this purpose, the second section of the paper provides a brief outline of a quasi-Kantian account of thought experiments (TE) in the empirical sciences from the viewpoint of a radically functional, strictly not material, a priori. On the basis of this account, a fundamental similarity and two main differences between empirical-scientific and narrative thought experiments are brought to the fore: the counterfactual (...) construction of idealised scenarios is a fundamental characteristic that is shared by scientific and fictional thought experiments (and, more generally, by science and art). The differences depend on the different intentionalities to which this construction is subordinated. Fictional TEs, instead of resolving the dimension of counterfactuality in real empirical facts or processes, use it to transpose certain cultural contents (thoughts, feelings, possible courses of action, etc.) into a dimension outside any particular space and time, which are able to produce a symbolic shelter that protects us from the particular adverse events of concrete life. This, on the one hand, generates in us the feeling of pleasure or enjoyment that tradition has so often linked to artistic enjoyment and, on the other, urges us, implicitly or explicitly, to re-enact those contents in the first person and to take an evaluative stance towards them. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism is often adrift in a sea of interpretations. As such, it is frequently conflated with related terms like globalism, multiculturalism, and internationalism, just as it is unfittingly juxtaposed with concepts like nationalism and patriotism. Cosmopolitanism thus risks becoming a concept so fluid as to lose all meaning. While cosmopolitanisms’ conceptual ambiguity and definitional fluidity has provided inspiration for over two millennia of debate, it has also contributed to the lack of a grounded and accessible conceptual framework from which today’s (...) students, educators, and cosmopolitanism-minded practitioners can build. This article seeks to address that deficit by introducing an original conceptual framework from which modern cosmopolitanism, as an ethical project, might be succinctly identified, understood, and evaluated. This framework forwards that modern notions of cosmopolitanism rest on three primary pillars: respect, responsibility, and rootedness, each of which must be simultaneously realized for cosmopolitanism to exist. In the cosmopolitan context, respect prioritizes unconditional respect for free rational beings even as it conditionally assesses how cultural practices uplift the individual. Concurrently, cosmopolitan responsibility is recognizing and fulfilling one’s inexorable moral obligation to others. Finally, cosmopolitan rootedness is creating and maintaining conditions where social justice and human flourishing may thrive within one’s own traditions, cultures(s), and society. (shrink)

Empathy is a major aspect of the interplay between filmmaking and reception. Philosophers and neuroscientists have asserted how film’s technical and conceptual devices seemingly simulate the streamings of consciousness by rendering through images the very processes of thought. More recently, in a noteworthy collaborative work between neuroscience and film theory, Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra (2020) have observed how the process of “embodied simulation” is at the basis of empathy, making possible intense and diversified experiences of space, objects and other (...) individuals, and offering an important contribution to the study of how films are experienced and co-created by viewers. Drawing on these arguments from neuroscience, philosophy and film theory, in this paper I explore a renewed relationship between empathy and film aesthetics. (shrink)