The origin of moral agency is a much-debated issue. While rationalists or Kantians have argued that moral agency is rooted in reason, sentimentalists or Humeans have ascribed its origin to empathic feelings. This debate between rationalists and sentimentalists still stands with respect to persons with mental disorders, such as individuals diagnosed with mild forms of Autism Spectrum Disorder, without intellectual impairment. Individuals with ASD are typically regarded as moral agents, however their ability for empathy remains debated. The goal of this (...) paper is to investigate the mechanisms of moral actions in people with ASD, by finding arguments for the origin of their moral actions, supporting either the sentimentalist or the rationalist view of the dispute. We propose to revisit the debate using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to study the autobiographies of individuals with High-Functioning Autism and Asperger Syndrome. While conducting the systematic analysis of 10 autobiographies, we re-examined both the rationalist and the sentimentalist positions, considering the links between empathic feelings and moral agency. The investigation of the temporal dimensions of emotional experiences, an aspect overlooked by previous research, indicated that individuals with ASD empathize with others, but in different ways as compared to neurotypicals. A relationship between emotional experience and the type of moral agency exhibited by individuals with forms of ASD was established. As a consequence, our analyses support the sentimentalist stance on moral action. (shrink)

In recent years, a ''change in attitude'' in particle physics has led to our understanding current quantum field theories as effective field theories (EFTs). The present paper is concerned with the significance of this EFT approach, especially from the viewpoint of the debate on reductionism in science. In particular, I shall show how EFTs provide a new and interesting case study in current philosophical discussion on reduction, emergence, and inter-level relationships in general.

Leading experts and rising stars in the field explore whether cosmopolitanism becomes impossible in the theoretical framework that assumed the absence of a final ground. The questions that the volume addresses refer exactly to the foundational predicament that characterizes cosmopolitanism: How is it possible to think cosmopolitanism after the critique of foundations? Can cosmopolitanism be conceived without an ‘ultimate’ ground? Can we construct theories of cosmopolitanism without some certainties about the entire world or about the cosmos? Should we continue to (...) look for foundations of cosmopolitan rights, norms and values? Alternatively, should we aim towards cosmopolitanism without foundations or towards cosmopolitanism with ‘contingent foundations’? Could cosmopolitanism be the very attempt to come to terms with the failure of ultimate grounds? Written accessibly and contributing to key debates on political philosophy, and social and political thought, this volume advances the concept of post-foundational cosmopolitanism by bridging the polarised approaches to the concept. (shrink)

A laughter that will bury you: the morality of plant-based meat irony When plant-based meats enter the foodscape, they face the challenge of how to communicate their nature and function to consumers: one strategy for navigating the tension between portraying conventional meat as something to be replaced and affirming their unique meaty tastiness is through ironic claims and performances. This paper seeks to analyse the moral stance of irony in plant-based meat advertisements, specifically when this irony involves the death of (...) animals. Firstly, it presents an argument showing that, from the standpoint of veganism, ironising about animals’ death can be a moral wrong. Secondly, by relying on an interpretation of irony that leverages its potential for subverting and criticising hegemonic viewpoints, it is shown that this kind of irony can serve as a form of resistance aimed at dismantling the pervasive indifference towards the killing of animals for producing meat. (shrink)

Weak/strong duality is usually accompanied by what seems a puzzling ontological feature: the fact that under this kind of duality what is viewed as 'elementary' in one description gets mapped to what is viewed as 'composite' in the dual description. This paper investigates the meaning of this apparent 'particle democracy', as it has been called, by adopting an historical approach. The aim is to clarify the nature of the correspondence between 'dual particles' in the light of an historical analysis of (...) the developments of the idea of weak/strong duality, starting with Dirac's electric-magnetic duality and its successive generalizations in the context of field theory, to arrive at its first extension to string theory. This analysis is then used as evidential basis for discussing the 'elementary/composite' divide and, after taking another historical detour by analysing an instructive analogy case, drawing some conclusions on the particle-democracy issue. (shrink)

Is there more that one "Curie's principle"? How far are different formulations legitimate? What are the aspects that make it so scientifically fruitful, independently of how it is formulated? The paper is devoted to exploring these questions. We start with illustrating Curie's original 1894 article and his focus. Then, we consider the way that the discussion of the principle took shape from early commentators to its modern form. We say why we think that the modern focus on the inter-state version (...) of the principle loses sight of some of the most interesting significant applications of the principle. Finally, we address criticism of the principle put forward by Norton and purported counterexamples due to Roberts. (shrink)

This volume contains a selection of contributions to the workshop 'Linguistic realization of evidentiality in European languages', held at the 30th Annual ...

This essay uses citational analyses to argue that most of the philosophers considered "postanalytic" - Wittgenstein, McDowell, Davidson, and Rorty - are not, in fact, genuine figures of rapprochement, since the particular essays cited, and/or the background literature that is cited, are not shared in common between the standard-bearing analytic and continental journals.

Nella ricerca antropologica, la distinzione “natura/cultura” è considerata una delle dicotomie di base che soggiacciono – nel corso della storia – ai diversi modelli del mondo. Nei termini di questa distinzione ci orientiamo nell’ambiente che ci circonda, tracciamo distinzioni metafisiche, formuliamo giudizi di valore. Eppure, tanto questa opposizione è intuitiva e di immediata comprensione, tanto diventa sfuggente non appena si tenti di individuare dove sia il confine che la definisce, e di...

Providing insights into the interrelation between scientific and religious belief, this work covers features of belief in general and discusses distinctive properties between belief, knowledge and acceptance. These properties are considered in relation and comparison to religious belief.".

The concept of nature in Western thought has been informed by the assumption of a categorical distinction between natural and artificial entities, which goes back to John Stuart Mill or even Aristotle. Such a way of articulating the natural/artificial distinction has proven unfit for conservation purposes mainly because of the extent and the pervasiveness of human activities that would leave no nature left to be conserved, and alternative views have been advanced. In this contribution, after arguing for the importance of (...) the concept of naturalness as a guide for conservation, I will try to provide an account of the natural/artificial distinction suited to contemporary conservation framing. Focusing on a particular kind of objects that I suggest to name “environmental objects”, I propose and defend the view of “naturalness as independence” according to which the more or less an environmental object's identity conditions and survival depend on human intervention, the more or less that object is artificial or natural, respectively. According to this view, conserving environmental objects will equate to maintaining or improving their naturalness or even originating artificial objects that may become new natural objects. This view has the advantage, on the one hand, of providing a rationale for a distinction which is not only part of how people think, but also pervasive in conservation practices and policies and, on the other hand, of accounting for the global pervasiveness of human intervention in the so-called natural world. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo valorar la contribución del Centro de Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales y Humanísticas en Salud a las Ciencias Sociales y Humanísticas en el sector de la Salud de Camagüey, desde la contextualización de la política científica cubana en la proyección estratégica de la entidad. En el mismo se expone la trayectoria de la gestión de la actividad científico-tecnológica del centro. Se utilizó la revisión de los documentos y resultados generados por la entidad y trabajos publicados (...) acerca de la actividad científica. Se concluye que el centro es una institución pertinente y con sus resultados impacta en la formación integral de los recursos humanos y en el desarrollo del enfoque social de los problemas de salud. The objective of this work is to value the contribution of the Center of development for the Social and Humanity Sciences in Health to the Social and Humanity Sciences in the health area in Camagüey, from the contextualization of the Cuban scientific policy in the strategic projection of this center. Its trajectory on the management of the scientific-technological activity was exposed. It was used the revision of documents and results generated by the institution, and published works about the scientific activity. It is concluded that the center is pertinent and its results have an impact in the integral formation of the human resources and the development of the social viewpoint of health problems. (shrink)

In the context of astrophysical modeling at the solar system scale, we investigate the modalities implied by taking into account different levels of detail at which phenomena can be considered. In particular, by framing the analysis in terms of the how-possibly/how-actually distinction, we address the debated question as to whether the degree of plausibility is tightly linked to the degree of detail. On the grounds of concrete examples, we argue that, also in the astrophysical context examined, this is not necessarily (...) the case. (shrink)

This volume deploys recent feminist epistemological frameworks to analyze how concepts like knowledge, authority, rationality, objectivity and testimony were constructed in Greece and Rome. The introduction serves as a field guide to feminist epistemological interpretations of classical sources, and the following sixteen chapters treat a variety of genres and time periods, from Greek poetry, tragedy, philosophy, oratory, historiography and material culture to Roman comedy, epic, oratory, letters, law and their reception. By using an intersectional approach to demonstrate how epistemic systems (...) exclude and pathologize the experiences of ancient women and other oppressed groups, these contributions aid in the recovery of non-dominant narratives and reveal issues of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identity, religion, age, class, familial status and citizenship in the ancient and modern world. The volume contributes to a more inclusive and equitable study of classical antiquity and builds transhistorical connections capable of exposing similar injustices in our own time. (shrink)

We suggest a fuller understanding of the obligation to respect patient autonomy can be gained by recognizing patients as historically and socially situated agents, whose values are developed, challenged, and changed, rather than merely applied, in their decision-making about their use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis or preimplantation genetic screening (PGD/PGS). We ground this discussion in empirical research on the patients experiences with PGD/PGS, and conclude by suggesting that promoting patients’ self-respect is a useful ethical standard for providers and practices to (...) recognize. (shrink)

Nel 2009, prendendo le mosse da articoli e libri pubblicati negli anni precedenti, Maurizio Ferraris proponeva la “documentalità”, una ontologia sociale che, a differenza della received view basata sull’intenzionalità collettiva, individuava il fondamento degli oggetti sociali negli atti iscritti. Prendendo come spunto due oggetti sociali tipicamente torinesi – il capoluogo piemontese è il luogo di nascita del filosofo – e cioè la casa automobilistica Fiat e l’Università di Torino, in questo breve saggio si discutono alcune tra le tesi che caratterizzano (...) una ontologia sociale siffatta. Particolare attenzione viene data alla tesi secondo cui l’identità di un oggetto sociale e la sua permanenza attraverso il tempo dipenderebbero dall’iscrizione che ne è alla base anziché, come per esempio nella posizione searliana, dall’oggetto fisico sottostante. Questa tesi, si sostiene, acquisisce particolare pregnanza nell’epoca del web, quell’acceleratore della documentalità, per dirla con le parole del filosofo, che ha la caratteristica di mostrare nella sua evidenza la struttura stessa della realtà sociale e, in tal modo, di diventare uno strumento per il cambiamento. Mettendo in luce la linea concettuale che unisce Documentalità (2009) con uno dei lavori più recenti di Ferraris, Mobilitazione totale (2015), si articola e si sostiene l’idea secondo cui il web svolge una duplice funzione. Da un lato, rivelare l’emergere della società dalla natura, riproducendo in tempi osservabili e in un ambiente monitorabile, quello di cui non è possibile essere spettatori diretti. Dall’altro, renderne evidente la struttura ultima che, appunto, è una struttura documentale. (shrink)

The article substantiates the possibility of interpreting expertise as a research communicative practice, in contrast to the expert “comparison with the sample”. Inside the so-called examinations, a counter-examination is institutionally integrated. The communication of expert and counter-expert position, which is a phenomenological personality choice, can take a form of personal institutionalized communication, and can be mediated by mediators and media texts. The results of examination and counter-interaction are determined by many factors, among which the coincidence (mismatch) of the images of (...) the future. Communication between a layman and an expert about science-dimensional situations can be considered in prism of various optics – linguistic, sociological, socio-political, psychological optics, fixing a number of several paradoxes (equality, limited choice, excess / deficit). (shrink)

The article analyzes the interdisciplinary methodology of city research within the philosophical and cultural approach. The authors argue that at present, besides sociological and economic approaches to the interpretation of the city, the cultural and philosophical examination of city is of special interest. It combines both theoretical issues and the practical aspects. The authors present the philosophical and cultural analysis of the city as well as the general concept of chronotopia. The concept of chronotope, proposed by M. M. Bakhtin and (...) his followers, is most often used as a tool for the analysis of fiction. According to the authors, the spatio-temporal diagnostics of the city also has significant theoretical and practical potential. The authors discuss various literary and philosophical texts analyzing the feautures and evolution of the “soul of the city” (written by Russians N.P. Antsiferov, I.M. Grevs, Y.M. Lotman, M.S. Kagan, I.I. Mitin as well as by foreign scholars Y. Slezkine, K. Schlogel, exploring the chronotope of Soviet cities). The article presents other modern Russian and foreign researchers who directly collaborated with the authors of this research in joint urban projects: M. Golovanivskaya (“syntax” of urban squares), “Ural matrix” (A. Ivanov, I. Lisovets, E. Trubina), chronotope of a small Israeli city (E. Rimon), Stanford chronotopes (J. Bender, D.E. Wellbery). Since the city, like any cultural phenomenon, manifests itself within a set of spatio-temporal coordinates, the chronotope can be considered as the basic tool for its philosophical and cultural interpretation. The article substantiates the practical aspects of applying chronotopia to the analysis of the city: chronotopes of the past and everyday life in cities of certain types, strategic opportunities and boundaries of the chronotopes of a given city. The authors concludes that the chro-notopia of city is a transdisciplinary field in the cultural and philosophical studies of the city. (shrink)

On 3 June 2008 the National Family Policy Concept was adopted by Seimas that states the goals and principles of the state family policy and several times refers to historical and scientific experience. The present article aims to reveal the historical and legal experience of the ancient Rome that laid foundations of contemporary private law and to compare the goals of the National Family Policy Concept and the state policy of the ancient Rome regarding family issues. The concept of family (...) framed by the National Family Policy Concept is based on matrimony. This is why the authors of the article focus on Roman matrimony. Having discussed the ancient Roman concept of marriage and Roman state policy regarding issues of matrimony and family and comparing it with the aims of the National Family Policy concept it might be stated that policy of encouraging family and promoting family relations based on matrimony that is provided by the Lithuanian state is not a new invention but may also refer to legal resolutions of the ancient Rome. (shrink)

El desarrollo de habilidades lectoras y el conocimiento de elementos teóricos para la comprensión de los textos científicos es una necesidad en la formación de todo profesional. Para que los futuros egresados puedan comprender esta tipología textual es necesario que cada docente, desde las diferentes asignaturas del currículo escolar, le ofrezcan las herramientas necesarias para interactuar con estos. Por tal motivo este trabajo tiene como objetivo realizar una revisión bibliográfica de los aspectos esenciales acerca de la comprensión lectora y en (...) particular de los textos científicos, sustentada en las concepciones vigotskianas, así como en categorías de la Lingüística Textual que posibilitan la interpretación y procesamiento de la información en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje. The development of literacy skills and knowledge of theoretical elements for the understanding of scientific texts is a need in any professional training. In order that future graduates can understand this textual typology it is necessary that each teacher, from the different subjects of the school curriculum, offers the necessary tools to interact with these texts. For this reason this work is intended to carry out a literature review of the essential aspects of reading comprehension and in particular of scientific texts, supported in the vigotskians conceptions and categories of Textual Linguistics that make possible the interpretation and processing of information in the teaching-learning process. (shrink)

In Norway, a system of inter-institutional coordination is used to monitor the families of children with special needs and plan the necessary assistance. It relies on the role of coordinator, assumed by health or social work professionals. This study aims to identify how coordinators perceive their function and the coordination system; it identifies obstacles and facilitators encountered by the coordinators, as well as the potential impact of these factors on families’ access to supports. The qualitative study is based on the (...) analysis of 18 individual interviews and 5 focus-groups with a total of 38 participants. The interviews were conducted in 6 Norwegian municipalities. The results show an unstable, ill-defined professional identity. Commitment of the coordinators varies according to their skills and the available resources allocated to helping families; most of them would like to be more involved. The system functioning often leads to responses that are not adapted to the families’ needs. This discrepancy between prescribed work and reality generates experiences of professional suffering. (shrink)

After briefly reconstructing how and when anthropogenic climate change awareness and nature conservation emerged in Western societies (section “Introduction. The Discovery of Climate Change and the Beginning of Nature Conservation”), a comparison between “old” and today’s conservationism is offered (section “Old and New Conservationism”), and two cases of nature conservation motivated by climate change are presented: nature-based solutions, and the “Global Deal for Nature” (section “Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change”). Then, the End of Nature claim is discussed, and the main (...) features of nature – and nature conservation – in the Anthropocene are sketched (section “The End of Nature as We Know It”). Finally, some remarks concerning what remains of pristine nature and preservationism are offered (section “Conclusion. What Remains of Preservationism”). (shrink)

When we communicate with others, we usually know when we are expected to contribute to an evolving dialogue, such as during a debate, or when it is suitable to generate predictable responses, for example, at a marriage ceremony. However, in cross-cultural communication situations, communicating partners may have different assumptions in this respect. In particular, when a western communicator expects a dialogical development, a Russian participant may expect the same communication situation to progress as a sequence of predictable communication acts. This (...) clash of implicit expectations often results in communication failure, without either party realizing that implementing incompatible approaches to information sharing is the reason for this failure. In this article, I introduce the terms ‘dialogical engagement’ and ‘monological sequencing’ whilst exploring cross-cultural communication problems between Russia and the West. I use these terms to describe mechanisms that characterize both cultures’ preferred communication patterns and which, when inadvertently deployed, cause collisions between Russian and western communicating partners. By uncovering these differences, I intend to progress beyond merely acknowledging cross-cultural communication problems between the two worlds. Besides, as in the Russian cultural setting, more communication situations are implicitly expected to develop as monological sequences than similar situations in the West, understanding this particular distinction may prevent practitioners in numerous fields from making the mistake of expecting cross-cultural communication situations to develop in line with their implicit assumptions. (shrink)

Nota crítica sobre el libro de María Luisa Femenías (2022). _Los disidentes : filósofos feministas excluidos de la memoria, _Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires : Galerna, 446 páginas.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 208 Seiten: 79-101.

Algorithmically driven online dating platforms today promise the ability to sort through relevant data and identify one’s ideal amorous matches effectively. Yet the appeal of technological and scientific solutions to the messy problem of finding partners is hardly new. This introduction to the Focus section “It’s a Match!” argues that the history of amorous matching has long been part and parcel of the history of science, in particular the social sciences. Taking matching as an “applied science of social harmony,” the (...) authors argue that concern over more reliable techniques for determining the suitability of partners has formed an essential part of both the maintenance of social order and the shaping of subjectivities, enabling discourses of informed choice and the rational management of the passions, while also reinforcing and subverting structures of age, gender, race, and sexuality. (shrink)

The author considers the Digital Humanities as a tendency towards a constructive synthesis of computer technology and humanitarian science in the context of their claim to make a paradigm shift in the humanities. As part of this review, the author raises a question about the role of interactive multimedia tools in the humanities, and tried to evaluate the novelty and content that scientific and educational projects receive with their help. The author develops and justifies the principle of systematization of Digital (...) Humanities projects, based on the priority of distinguishing projects by the nature of the relationship between their humanitarian and computer (technological) components. Considering both the actual digital projects and the academic publications devoted to them in the context of their systematization, the author observes that many projects are largely experimental in nature due to the use of ever new multimedia tools, so it is premature to talk about a meaningful transformation of humanitarian science. Focusing on the issue of a successful synthesis of digital technologies and the humanities, the author notes that new technological tools (multimedia, AI or neural networks, etc) allow raising new questions, updating additional objects of research and creating new methods. However, new tools do not always set the completeness of the new content, only supplementing it, and the acquired interactivity does not always directly work for scientific character. In this case, we face with the reverse situation, when the claims of technologically determined disciplines to be scientific are intertwined with the claims of disciplinary science to manufacturability. As a result, the author concludes that the direction of Digital Humanities is significantly influenced by technoscience with its dissolution of the boundaries between fundamental and applied research and the desire for new technologies that transform the processes under study, which makes McLuhan’s concept especially relevant. (shrink)

Nel 2009 esce Documentalità. Perché è necessario lasciar tracce di Maurizio Ferraris. Si tratta di un libro importante, per varie ragioni, ma qui vorremmo sottolinearne principalmente due. Innanzitutto, perché si pone come un’opera di rottura all’interno di una tradizione teorica consolidata – o, almeno, fino a quel momento assai poco movimentata. In secondo luogo, perché le tesi lì sostenute hanno degli esiti che vanno ben al di là della teoria. Cominciando con il primo punto, occorre ricord...

Nella prefazione del suo libro L’evoluzione della cultura (2004), il genetista italiano Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza scriveva: «L’evoluzione della cultura è un argomento che ha stranamente ricevuto pochissima attenzione […] Spero che quest’operetta aiuti a suscitare l’interesse che l’argomento merita e che dia vita completamente nuova a una scienza che in America sta morendo e in Europa non ha mai fatto molta strada, l’antropologia culturale, e convinca della necessità di un approccio multidisci...

La doctrina aristotélica de la elección desempeña un papel clave en su concepción de la virtud ética y de la praxis moral. El objeto de este artículo es analizar el planteamiento aristotélico y cómo es interpretado por Aspasio en el siglo II d.c. El hecho de que el Comentario aspasiano sea el primero conservado, nos permite rastrear su evolución, los problemas a los que responde y las consecuencias de este proceso. Siendo su interpretación fiel a la concepción aristotélica, incorpora elementos (...) de la visión estoica de la teoría de la acción, que tiene como consecuencia una modificación de la doctrina de la voluntariedad de los actos. (shrink)

The 17th and 18th centuries were the theatre of the fight between two main theories concerning the development of organisms: preformationism (or preformism) and epigeneticism (or epigenesis). According to the first, the formation of new features during organisms’ development can be seen as the result of a mere unfolding of features that were preformed in the sperm, the egg, or the zygote. According to epigeneticism, there is no pre-existing form, and development is a process where genuinely new characters emerge from (...) formless matter. The debate involved naturalists, anatomists, physiologists, microscopists, medical doctors, and philosophers as well. Current developmental biology is, according to some, still inspired (or haunted) by the age-old controversy. The aim of this contribution is twofold. First, to discuss in which guise, if any, the old controversy is still shaping the contemporary debate in biology and philosophy of biology; and, second, to sketch Schelling’s position on that debate, suggesting that it may contain some still valuable philosophical insight. (shrink)

The idea for this issue of the Rivista di Estetica comes from a conference that was held at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Belgrade, June 2011. The question that the speakers were asked to tackle was “What keeps society together?”. At least since John Searle’s 1995 book, The Construction of Social Reality, a popular answer to that question has been that collective intentionality lies at bottom of all manifestations of social reality – from interactions in informal groups (...) to... (shrink)