Ensayos-homenaje en el primer centenario del nacimiento del fil sofo espa ol, que abordan diversos aspectos de la obra de Ortega. Los cuatro trabajos dibujan con rigor algunos de los horizontes planteados por el maestro y respetan la debida modernidad conceptual. la compilaci n estuvo a cargo de Fernando Salmer n, Alejandro Rossi, Luis Villoro y Ram n Xirau.

What do we talk about when we talk about ethical diversity as a challenge to the normative justifiability of liberal democracy? Many theorists claim that liberal democracy ought to be reformed or rejected for not being sufficiently ‘inclusive’ towards diversity; others argue that, on the contrary, liberalism is desirable because it accommodates (some level of) diversity. Moreover, it has been argued that concern for diversity should lead us to favour (say) neutralistic over perfectionist, universalistic over particularistic, participative over representative versions (...) of liberal democracy. This paper provides a conceptual framework to situate those debates, and argues that there are two fundamental ways in which diversity constitutes a challenge to the justificatory status of liberal democracy: consistency (whereby diversity causes clashes between the prescriptions generated by normative political theories), and adequacy (whereby diversity generates a rift between our experience of what is considered valuable and what the theory treats as such). (shrink)

Do salient normative claims about politics require moral premises? Political moralists think they do, political realists think they do not. We defend the viability of realism in a two-pronged way. First, we show that a number of recent attacks on realism, as well as realist responses to those attacks, unduly conflate distinctively political normativity and non-moral political normativity. Second, we argue that Alex Worsnip and Jonathan Leader-Maynard’s recent attack on realist arguments for a distinctively political normativity depends on assuming moralism (...) as the default view, which places an excessive burden on the viability of realism, and so begs the question. Our discussion, though, does not address the relative merits of realism and moralism, so its upshot is relatively ecumenical: moralism need not be the view that all apt normative political judgments are moral judgments, and realism need not be the view that no apt normative political judgments are moral judgments. (shrink)

Is there more to the recent surge in political realism than just a debate on how best to continue doing what political theorists are already doing? I use two recent books, by Michael Freeden and Matt Sleat, as a testing ground for realism’s claims about its import on the discipline. I argue that both book take realism beyond the Methodenstreit, though each in a different direction: Freeden’s takes us in the realm of meta-metatheory, Sleat’s is a genuine exercise in grounding (...) liberal normative theory in a non-moralistic way. I conclude with wider methodological observations. I argue that unlike communitarianism (the previous contender for the discipline’s renewal), realism has the potential to open new vistas, though their novelty is to a large extent relative to the last forty years or so: realism is best thought of as a return to a more traditional way of doing political philosophy. (shrink)

This is a response to Erman and Moller's response to our reply to their 'Political Legitimacy in the Real Normative World', both also in this journal.

cal basis of consciousness. We continue by discussing the relation between spatiotem- One of the outstanding problems in the cog- poral patterns of brain activity and con- nitive sciences is to understand how ongo- sciousness, with particular attention to pro- ing conscious experience is related to the cesses in the gamma frequency band. We workings of the brain and nervous system. then adopt a critical perspective and high-.

In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then (...) put forward three main normative claims, each of which is compatible with the evidence. We start with a critique of the epistocratic position commonly thought to be supported by the evidence. We then introduce a qualified critique of referenda and other forms of plebiscite, and an outline of a tribune-based system of popular control over oligarchic influence on the policy process. Our discussion points towards a renewal of democracy in a plebeian but not plebiscitarian direction: Attention to the relative power of social classes matters more than formal dispersal of power through voting. We close with some methodological reflections about the compatibility between our normative claims and the realist program in political philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay is a critical study of Jason Brennan's Against Democracy. We make three main points. First, we argue that Brennan's proposal of a right to competent government only works if one considers the absence of government a viable proposition, something most of his opponents are not prepared to do. Second, we suggest that Brennan's account of competent decision-making is blind to forms of oligarchic power that work against the very ideals of justice and epistemic virtue that competence is (...) meant to safeguard. Third, we muster empirical evidence to argue that, in the real world, democracy is not just about making decisions and selecting policies, in which case Brennan's argument misses its mark. (shrink)

From Physical World to Transcendent God(s): Mediatory Functions of Beauty in Plato, Dante and Rupa Gosvami -/- Dragana Jagušić -/- In various philosophical, religious and mystical traditions, beauty is often related to intellectual upliftment and spiritual ascent, which suggests that besides its common aesthetic value it may also acquire an epistemic, metaphysical and spiritual meaning or value. I will examine in detail three accounts in which beauty, at times inseparable from desire and love, mediates between physical, intellectual and spiritual levels (...) of existence. Since beauty, in all three accounts, takes on a mediatory role or function,1 I will name these mediations as follows: ancient Greek Eros-mediation or Beauty-mediation (Plato: ca. 429-347 BCE), late medieval Italian Beauty and Love-mediation (Dante Alighieri: 1265-1321) and pre-modern Indian Beauty and Love-mediation (Rūpa Gosvāmi: 1470/90-1564 CE).2 In the first section, I will analyse the stages of Eros or Beauty mediation in Plato; in the second section, I will turn to Dante’s Beauty and Love-mediation and compare it with Plato’s account. In the third section, I will analyse Rūpa’s account of Beauty and Love-mediation in comparison with both Plato and Dante. I will argue that there are certain patterns of mediation mutually shared if not between all three accounts, then at least between two of them. While Plato’s account clearly influenced Dante and was well integrated into Dante’s account, there is no mention or evidence of a pre-modern Bengali theologian influenced by ancient Greek and medieval Italian philosophy and mysticism. However, a strong convergence of elements of Beauty-mediations in Plato and Dante, as well as Beauty and Love-mediations in Dante and Rūpa Gosvāmi, confirms the universality of certain features of Beauty and Love-mediation and speaks in support of an all-inclusive account of them.3 -/- 1 By Beauty-mediation I mean an aesthetic, intellectual or spiritual reconciliation between opposites, such as human and divine, mortal and immortal, particular and universal, sexual and sacred and so on. 2 Rūpa Gosvāmi was an Indian theologian. More information about him is provided in section 3. 3 I am here applying transitivity: if Plato’s account (A) shares elements with Dante’s account (B) and if Dante’s account (B) shares those same elements with Rūpa’s account (C), then Plato’s (A) and Rūpa’s (C) accounts share some elements as well. Obviously, all accounts have some different elements not mutually shared, but I will not deal with them here. (shrink)

This paper outlines an account of political realism as a form of ideology critique. Our focus is a defence of the normative edge of this critical-theoretic project against the common charge that there is a problematic trade-off between a theory’s groundedness in facts about the political status quo and its ability to consistently envisage radical departures from the status quo. To overcome that problem we combine insights from three distant corners of the philosophical landscape: theories of legitimacy by Bernard Williams (...) and other realists, Frankfurt School-inspired Critical Theory, and recent analytic epistemological and metaphysical theories of cognitive bias, ideology, and social construction. The upshot is a novel account of realism as empirically-informed diagnosis- critique of social and political phenomena. This view rejects a sharp divide between descriptive and normative theory, and so is an alternative to the anti- empiricism of some approaches to Critical Theory as well as to the complacency towards existing power structures found within liberal realism, let alone mainstream normative political philosophy, liberal or otherwise. (shrink)

En su libro Mind and nature Gregory Bateson elabora un argumento que él llama ‘convencional’ para concluir que “nunca podremos ser capaces de reclamar conocimiento definitivo en asunto alguno [final knowledge of anything whatsoever]”. La conclusión es correcta, pero el argumento es engañoso y desorienta más de lo que ayuda. Además, Bateson, disimuladamente, introduce algunas afirmaciones falsas en medio de premisas verdaderas. Revisarlo nos permitirá aclarar algunos malentendidos comunes en filosofía de la ciencia, además de ser la excusa perfecta para (...) esbozar una introducción a la interpolación polinomial de Lagrange y una pequeña reflexión sobre los límites del conocimiento. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce a new species of elusive reason–reasons that it is impossible for an agent to act, or be motivated to act, for–and I show how this kind of elusive reason undermines a plausible claim about normative reasons, the Motivational Constraint. To defend the existence of this new kind of elusive reason, I respond to the objection that our intuitions are tracking another normative or evaluative phenomenon, such as reasons to have certain affective responses or reasons for (...) others to act. In addition, because accepting the new kind of elusive reason requires affirming the claim that S acts for a reason p only if S regards p as a reason to A, I develop an account of what it is for S to regard p as a reason to A. Finally, as part of arguing for the former claim, I argue that the idea of being moved to A for a reason p entails the idea of being moved to A in light of p, which itself entails the idea of regarding p as a reason. (shrink)

This chapter assesses John Gray’s modus vivendi-based justification for liberalism. I argue that his approach is preferable to the more orthodox deontological or teleological justificatory strategies, at least because of the way it can deal with the problem of diversity. But then I show how that is not good news for liberalism, for grounding liberal political authority in a modus vivendi undermines liberalism’s aspiration to occupy a privileged normative position vis-à-vis other kinds of regimes. So modus vivendi can save liberalism (...) from moralism, but at cost many liberals will not be prepared to pay. (shrink)

In *How Propaganda Works* Jason Stanley argues that democratic societies require substantial material equality because inequality causes ideologically flawed belief, which, in turn, make demagogic propaganda more effective. And that is problematic for the quality of democracy. In this brief paper I unpack that argument, in order to make two points: (a) the non-moral argument for equality is promising, but weakened by its reliance on a heavily moralised conception of democracy; (b) that problem may be remedied by whole-heartedly embracing a (...) more realistic conception of democracy. That conception is at least compatible with Stanley’s argument, if not implicit in parts of it. (shrink)

Some authors have called into question the normativity of logic, using as an argument that the bridge principles for logical normativity (MacFarlane, In what sense (in any) is logic normative for thought, 2004 )? are just by-products of general epistemic principles for belief. In this paper, I discuss that suggestion from a formal point of view. I show that some important bridge principles can be derived from usual norms for belief. I also describe some possible ways to block this derivation (...) by modifying the epistemic norms or weakening the bridge principles. Finally, I discuss different philosophical interpretations of these results. (shrink)

Reconstructing some of the experiences of people living with tuberculosis in Argentina in the first half of the twentieth century, as reflected not only in written and oral accounts but also in individual and collective actions, this article explores the ways in which patients came to grips with medical expertise in times of biomedical uncertainty. These negotiations, which inevitably included adaptations as well as confrontations, highlight a much less passive and submissive patient–physician relationship than is often assumed. Though patients were (...) certainly subordinate to medical doctors’ knowledge and practices, that subordination, far from absolute, was limited and often overthrown. The article focuses on patients’ demands to gain access to a vaccine not approved by the medical establishment. By engaging with media organizations, the sick invoked their “right to health” in order to obtain access to experimental treatments when biomedicine was unable to deliver efficient therapies. (shrink)

According to methodological anti-exceptionalism, logic follows a scientific methodology. There has been some discussion about which methodology logic has. Authors such as Priest, Hjortland and Williamson have argued that logic can be characterized by an abductive methodology. We choose the logical theory that behaves better under a set of epistemic criteria. In this paper, I analyze some important discussions in the philosophy of logic, and I show that they presuppose different methodologies, involving different notions of evidence and different epistemic values. (...) I argue that, rather than having a specific methodology such as abductivism, logic can be characterized by methodological pluralism. This position can also be seen as the application of scientific pluralism to the realm of logic. (shrink)

This paper explores the notion of reciprocity in the context of active pulmonary and laryngeal tuberculosis treatment and related control policies and practices. We seek to do three things: First, we sketch the background to contemporary global TB care and suggest that poverty is a key feature when considering the treatment of TB patients. We use two examples from TB care to explore the role of reciprocity: isolation and the use of novel TB drugs. Second, we explore alternative means of (...) justifying the use of reciprocity through appeal to different moral and political theoretical traditions. We suggest that each theory can be used to provide reasons to take reciprocity seriously as an independent moral concept, despite any other differences. Third, we explore general meanings and uses of the concept of reciprocity, with the primary intention of demonstrating that it cannot be simply reduced to other more frequently invoked moral concepts such as beneficence or justice. We argue that reciprocity can function as a mid-level principle in public health, and generally, captures a core social obligation arising once an individual or group is burdened as a result of acting for the benefit of others. We conclude that while more needs to be explored in relation to the theoretical justification and application of reciprocity, sufficient arguments can be made for it to be taken more seriously as a key principle within public health ethics and bioethics more generally. (shrink)

What is the point of ideology critique? Prominent Anglo-American philosophers recently proposed novel arguments for the view that ideology critique is moral critique, and ideologies are flawed insofar as they contribute to injustice or oppression. We criticize that view and make the case for an alternative and more empirically-oriented approach, grounded in epistemic rather than moral commitments. We make two related claims: (i) ideology critique can debunk beliefs and practices by uncovering how, empirically, they are produced by self-justifying power, and (...) (ii) the self-justification of power should be understood as an epistemic rather than moral flaw. Drawing on the recent realist revival in political theory, we argue that this genealogical approach has more radical potential, despite being more parsimonious than morality-based approaches. We demonstrate the relative advantages of our view by discussing the results of empirical studies on the contemporary phenomenon of neopatriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa. (shrink)

South Africa shared with the world the warning of a new strain of SARS-CoV2, Omicron, in November 2021. As a result, many high-income countries (HICs) instituted complete travel bans on persons leaving South Africa and other neighbouring countries. These bans were unnecessary from a scientific standpoint, and they ran counter to the International Health Regulations. In short, South Africa was penalized for sharing data. Data sharing during pandemics is commonly justified by appeals to solidarity. In this paper, we argue that (...) solidarity is, at best, an aspirational ideal to work toward but that it cannot ground an obligation to share data. Instead, low-and-middle income countries (LIMCs) should be guided by the principle of reciprocity, which states that we ought to return good for good received. Reciprocity is necessarily a conditional principle. LMICs, we argue, should only share data during future pandemics on the condition that HICs provide enforceable assurances that the benefits of data sharing will be equitably distributed and that LMICs won’t be penalized for sharing information. (shrink)

O presente artigo busca, a partir da filosofia de Michel de Montaigne, explicitar quais lições podemos aprender sobre o contexto de epidemia em que vivemos. Mas, afinal, aqui fica a pergunta fundamental deste texto: o que podemos aprender com um filósofo francês do século XVI, Michel de Montaigne, sobre esse momento tão devastador que estamos vivendo? É claro que Montaigne não nos dirá nada sobre a natureza do vírus, nem sobre nosso sistema imunológico, muito menos sobre metodologias de investigação científicas (...) para a procura de medicamentos para o tratamento da doença. O que Montaigne nos pode ensinar é algo de outra ordem, não da biológica, mas, da subjetiva. É uma (nova) disposição de nosso espírito que podemos aprender a desenvolver com o filósofo. (shrink)

Society increasingly demands corporations to be accountable for their past misbehaviours. Some corporations engage in forgetting work with the aim of avoiding responsibility for their wrongdoings. We argue that whenever social actors have their past actions called into question and engage in forgetting work, an ethics of remembering takes place. A collective project of social forgetting is contingent on the emergence of coordinated actions among players of an industry. Similarly, sustained efforts of forgetting work depend on the continuity of the (...) project through various generations of employees, which presumes the existence of frameworks of remembering in place. We analysed this paradox through a historical case study of the U.S. tobacco industry. We conclude that forgetting work may be a double-edged sword. It might be beneficial in the short run, to the extent that corporations can successfully maintain the public ignorance about their deceitful pasts. In the long run, however, it creates additional layers of historical irresponsibility and may turn into a compounded liability in the event the memory of the collective strategy of social forgetting becomes public. (shrink)

Suppose that a team of neurosurgeons and bioengineers were able to remove your brain from your body, suspend it in a life-sustaining vat of liquid nutrients, and connect its neurons and nerve terminals by wires to a supercomputer that would stimulate it with electrical impulses exactly like those it normally receives when embodied. According to this brain-in-a-vat thought experiment, your envatted brain and your embodied brain would have subjectively indistinguishable mental lives. For all you know—so one argument goes—you could be (...) such a brain in a vat right now.1 Daniel Dennett calls this sort of philosophical thought experiment an “intuition pump” (Dennett 1995). An intuition pump is designed to elicit certain intuitive convictions, but is not itself a proper argument: “intuition pumps are fine if they’re used correctly, but they can also be misused. They’re not arguments, they’re stories. Instead of having a conclusion, they pump an intuition. They get you to say ‘Aha! Oh, I get it!’ (Dennett 1995, p. 182). Philosophers have used the brain-in-a-vat story mainly to raise the problem of radical skepticism and to elicit various intuitions about meaning and knowledge (Putnam 1981). The basic intuition the story tries to pump is that the envatted brain, though fully conscious, has systematically false beliefs about the world, including itself. Some philosophers reject this intuition. They propose that the envatted brain’s beliefs are really about its artificial environment or that it.. (shrink)

Justificado y bien elaborado homenaje a uno de los más destacados filósofos latinoamericanos contemporáneos. Varios artículos se refieren a su obra Creer, saber, conocer; pero los hay también sobre temas como ideología y ética, y uno sobre la obra de Villoro como historiador, entre otros. Villoro responde a las objeciones expresadas en algunos trabajos en un artículo al final del volumen. Incluye también una bibliografía de Villoro"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

In May 2021, when the Delta variant of SARS-CoV2 was wreaking havoc in India, the Australian Federal Government banned its citizens and residents who were there from coming back to Australia for 14 days on penalty of fines or imprisonment. These measures were justified on the grounds of protecting the broader Australian public from potentially importing the Delta strain, which officials feared would then seed a local outbreak. Those Australians stranded in India, and their families and communities back home, claimed (...) that they were abandoned by Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government. This case—along with other barriers used as part of border control measures in the name of public health—raises the following question: is it ever morally permissible for a state to ban its citizens and residents from entering their own country during a pandemic? I conclude that it’s impermissible. I argue that persons have a right of entry that should be understood as a security right. This security right should be non-derogable because it’s a foundational good that is necessary for life-planning purposes. Moreover, it is a right that people should be able to rely upon absolutely, even during pandemics. At the very least, should someone believe that there are rare exceptions to the right of entry on public health grounds, governments have a duty—grounded in the principle of reciprocity—to support those who are temporarily denied entry. In the case of Australians stranded in India, I will argue that the Australian Federal Government failed on all accounts. (shrink)

El concepto de trastorno mental permite justificar intervenciones médicas, psicológicas y judiciales. Además, facilita a la/el consultante acceder a tratamientos mediante reembolsos o programas de salud pública, y por otro lado, podría conllevar estereotipos sociales. No obstante, el significado de dicho concepto no ha dejado de suscitar debate. En el presente artículo argumentaré que los trastornos de personalidad, tal como son definidos en el DSM-5, no cumplen con los criterios de patología de las propuestas principales (i.e. teoría bio-estadística de la (...) salud, disfunción dañina, o entidad patológica) debido a tres razones independientes: (i) no se han propuesto dis/funciones a la base de cada trastorno y, dado el estado del arte de la psicología evolucionista, es poco probable que se pueda llevar a cabo ese programa en el futuro; (ii) el concepto de daño (distrés, perjuicio) aplicable a los trastornos de personalidad es constitutivamente social (aunque no exclusivamente social), por lo que resulta más adecuado hablar de grados de discapacidad que de trastornos del individuo; y (iii) que la ausencia de condiciones patognomónicas para cada trastorno, junto a la elevada comorbilidad y multimorbilidad entre trastornos de personalidad, horada la validez de la nosología actual y de los diagnósticos diferenciales. Propondré como solución la eliminación de los trastornos de personalidad de la nosología psiquiátrica. Eliminar los trastornos de personalidad no equivale a desconocer el sufrimiento de las personas diagnosticadas, ni a ignorar que dicho sufrimiento precede a, –y no acaba con la disolución de– la etiqueta diagnóstica. Por ello, se propondrá una reconceptualización de dicho sufrimiento en términos de discapacidad, entendida desde el modelo social, y que no presupone patología. (shrink)

Explicit and implicit learning have been attributed to different learning processes that create different types of knowledge structures. Consistent with that claim, our study provides evidence that people integrate stimulus events differently when consciously aware versus unaware of the relationship between the events. In a first, acquisition phase participants sorted words into two categories , which were fully predicted by task-irrelevant primes—the labels of two other, semantically unrelated categories . In a second, test phase participants performed a lexical decision task, (...) in which all word stimuli stemmed from the previous prime categories and the primes were the labels of the previous target categories . Reliable priming effects in the second phase demonstrated that bidirectional associations between the respective categories had been formed in the acquisition phase , but these effects were found only in participants that were unaware of the relationship between the categories! We suggest that unconscious, implicit learning of event relationships results in the rather unsophisticated integration of the underlying event representations, whereas explicit learning takes the meaning of the order of the events into account, and thus creates unidirectional associations. (shrink)

In this rejoinder to Erman and Möller’s reply to our “Political Norms and Moral Values” we clarify the sense in which there can be specifically political values, and expound the practice-dependent notion of legitimacy adopted by our preferred version of political realism.

To what extent are questions of sovereign debt a matter for political rather than scientific or moral adjudication? We answer that question by defending three claims. We argue that (i) moral and technocratic takes on sovereign debt tend to be ideological in a pejorative sense of the term, and that therefore (ii) sovereign debt should be politicised all the way down. We then show that this sort of politicisation need not boil down to the crude Realpolitik of debtor-creditor power relations—a (...) conclusion that would leave no room for normative theory, among other problems. Rather, we argue that (iii) in a democratic context, a realist approach to politics centred on what Bernard Williams calls ‘The Basic Legitimation Demand’ affords a deliberative approach to the normative evaluation of public debt policy options. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to analyze the association between physical activity and eating habits during the COVID-19 pandemic among Brazilian adults. A sample of 1,929 participants answered an online survey, however 1,874 were included in the analysis. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on eating habits was assessed inquiring about participants' intake of fruits, vegetables, fried foods, and sweets during the pandemic. Physical activity was assessed by asking participants about their weekly frequency, intensity and number of minutes/hours engaging (...) in structured physical activities per week. Participants were then stratified into categories based on moderate-to-vigorous intensity and into active or inactive. Increased sweets consumption was the most commonly reported change to eating habits, followed by an increase in the consumption of vegetables, fruits, and fried foods. Physical activity practice was related to lower consumption of fried foods and sweets. A cluster analysis revealed subjects with higher the level of physical activity was more likely to follow a healthy diet. Thus, physical activity was positively associated with healthier eating habits. Health authorities must recommend regular physical as a strategy to improve overall health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Future studies should address the physical activity interventions to improve health status during a pandemic. (shrink)

Crowdfunding is regarded a financing mechanism that could improve the funding opportunities of businesses with a pro-social orientation. Indeed, it is assumed that on digital platforms, citizens are inclined to provide more support to projects with a social benefit than to those without such an orientation, with significant ethical implications for the common good. Yet, extant empirical evidence regarding such a claim is still inconclusive. To advance this discussion, the present paper analyzes the conditions that influence crowd support for projects (...) displaying a pro-social orientation on a reward-based crowdfunding platform. To build our hypotheses, we adopt the lens of framing theory, and we relate it to the digital context. Beginning from the premise that, on crowdfunding platforms, information about projects has a hierarchical structure, we argue that a project’s success crucially depends on how much its proponent emphasizes the pro-social cues within this structure. Moreover, we propose that because pro-social cues demarcate a project over others, the effectiveness of pro-social framing is enhanced when the number of projects on the platform, i.e., its crowdedness, increases. Logit estimates on 8631 Kickstarter projects indicate that pro-social framing is positively associated with success as we expected, yet only when it is moderately emphasized. Further, we find that crowdedness on the platform positively moderates the effect of pro-social orientation on success. (shrink)

Accelerated changes to the planet have created novel spaces to re-imagine the boundaries and foci of environmental health research. Climate change, mass species extinction, ocean acidification, biogeochemical disturbance, and other emergent environmental issues have precipitated new population health perspectives, including, but not limited to, one health, ecohealth, and planetary health. These perspectives, while nuanced, all attempt to reconcile broad global challenges with localized health impacts by attending to the reciprocal relationships between the health of ecosystems, animals, and humans. While such (...) innovation is to be encouraged, we argue that a more comprehensive engagement with the ethics of these emerging fields of inquiry will add value in terms of the significance and impact of associated interventions. In this contribution, we highlight how the concept of spatial and temporal scale can be usefully deployed to shed light on a variety of ethical issues common to emerging environmental health perspectives, and that the potential of scalar analysis implicit to van Potter’s conceptualization of bioethics has yet to be fully appreciated. Specifically, we identify how scale interacts with key ethical issues that require consideration and clarification by one health, ecohealth, and planetary health researchers and practitioners to enhance the effectiveness of research and practice, including justice and governance. (shrink)

A growing group of institutional investors use divestment strategically to deter misconducts that are harmful for the climate and society. Based on Kantian ethics, we propose that divestment represents investors’ universal and absolute moral commitment to socially responsible investing (SRI). Following categorical and hypothetical imperatives and reciprocity as a norm, we hypothesize how institutional investors’ commit to SRI through a divestment strategy against ethically reprehensible behaviour of banks, especially when these investors represent banks themselves. Using a hand-collected database of the (...) revelation dates of enforcement actions on banks, we find evidence that banks are less likely to divest equity holding on banks with misconduct (fined banks) than their non-bank institutional investors peers. Banks that commit to invest responsibly by signing for the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) are not significantly more likely to divest on fined banks stocks than non-signatory banks. Moreover, divestment of fined banks whose own legitimacy to operate is in question is not significantly different from non-fined banks divestment. We find that European banks are more inclined to sell their holdings permanently on fined banks than their United States peers. Therefore, bank’s moral commitment to SRI via divestments is influenced more by cultural and reciprocity norms than their moral commitment to participate in the PRI. (shrink)

This paper develops the idea that valid arguments are equivalent to true conditionals by combining Kripke’s theory of truth with the evidential account of conditionals offered by Crupi and Iacona. As will be shown, in a first-order language that contains a naïve truth predicate and a suitable conditional, one can define a validity predicate in accordance with the thesis that the inference from a conjunction of premises to a conclusion is valid when the corresponding conditional is true. The validity predicate (...) so defined significantly increases our expressive resources and provides a coherent formal treatment of paradoxical arguments. (shrink)