As Hans Urs von Balthasar has put it, 1 This remark is the inspiration for the following rereading of Bonaventure’s inaugural lecture. Not only does the Commentary succeed to a remarkable degree in unifying scholasticism and mysticism, but it also contains the seeds of a descriptive theological method that is original in ways that parallel contemporary phenomenological thought, despite the risk of anachronism inherent in such a claim.

The supporter of vague objects has been long challenged by the following ‘Argument from Identity’: 1) if there are vague objects, then there is ontically indeterminate identity; 2) there is no ontically indeterminate identity; therefore, 3) there are no vague objects. Some supporters of vague objects have argued that 1) is false. Noonan (Analysis 68: 174–176, 2008) grants that 1) does not hold in general, but claims that ontically indeterminate identity is indeed implied by the assumption that there are vague (...) objects of a certain special kind (i.e. vague objects*). One can therefore formulate a ‘New Argument from Identity’: 1′) if there are vague objects*, then there is ontically indeterminate identity; 2) there is no ontically indeterminate identity; therefore, 3′) there are no vague objects*. Noonan’s strategy is to argue that premiss 1′) is inescapable, and, as a consequence, that Evans’s alleged defence of 2) is a real challenge for any supporter of vague objects. I object that a supporter of vague objects who grants the validity of Evans’s argument allegedly in favour of 2) should reject premiss 1′). The threat of the New Argument from Identity is thus avoided. (shrink)

Empathy is a term used increasingly both in moral theory and animal ethics. Yet, its precise meaning is often left unexplored. The book aims to tackle this by clarifying the different and even contradictory ways in which “empathy” can be defined.

Empathy has become a common point of debate in moral psychology. Recent developments in psychiatry, neurosciences and social psychology have led to the revival of sentimentalism, and the ‘empathy thesis’ has suggested that affective empathy, in particular, is a necessary criterion of moral agency. The case of psychopaths – individuals incapable of affective empathy and moral agency, yet capable of rationality – has been utilised in support of this case. Critics, however, have been vocal. They have asserted that the case (...) of autism proves the empathy thesis wrong; that psychopathy centres on rational rather than empathic limitations; that empathy is not relevant to many common normative behaviours; and that rationality is required when empathy fails. The present paper analyses these four criticisms. It will be claimed that they each face severe difficulties, and that moral agency ought to be approached via a multi-tier model, with affective empathy as a baseline. (shrink)

New genetic technologies promise to generate valuable insights into the aetiology of several psychiatric conditions, as well as a wider range of human and animal behaviours. Advances in the neurosciences and the application of new brain imaging techniques offer a way of integrating DNA analysis with studies that are looking at other biological markers of behaviour. While candidate 'genes for' certain conditions, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, are said to be 'un-discovered' at a faster rate than they are discovered, many (...) studies are being conducted on personality traits such as aggressiveness and anti-social traits. The clinical applicability and implications of these studies are often discussed within the scientific community. However, little attention has so far been paid to their possible policy implications in relation to criminality management and to Criminal Law itself. Similarly, the related ethical issues arising in the field of crime control, and the tensions between enhancing security for society and protecting civil liberties, are currently under-explored. This paper investigates these ethical issues by focusing on the views of those professionals – including judges, lawyers, probation officers and social workers – who work with individuals 'deemed at risk' of violent and aggressive behaviours. It also discusses and problematizes mainstream rhetoric and arguments around the notion of 'risky individuals'. (shrink)

Most moral theorists agree that it is one thing to believe that someone has slighted you and another to resent her for the insult; one thing to believe that someone did you a favor and another to feel gratitude toward her for her kindness. While all of these ways of responding to another's conduct are forms of moral appraisal, the reactive attitudes are said to 'go beyond' beliefs in some way. We think this claim is adequately explained only when we (...) take seriously the fact that reactive attitudes are emotions. In this paper, we appeal to insights of the emotions literature to highlight one key way in which reactive attitudes go beyond beliefs: beliefs about a person and her morally significant conduct merely ascribe to the person the property of having performed a morally significant action, while reactive attitudes are ways of experiencing that person as having performed a morally significant action. We then suggest that appreciating this is a crucial first step toward understanding why reactive emotions play roles in our practices around responsibility that beliefs do not. (shrink)

The subjective feeling of free choice is an important feature of human experience. Experimental tasks have typically studied free choice by contrasting free and instructed selection of response alternatives. These tasks have been criticised, and it remains unclear how they relate to the subjective feeling of freely choosing. We replicated previous findings of the fMRI correlates of free choice, defined objectively. We introduced a novel task in which participants could experience and report a graded sense of free choice. BOLD responses (...) for conditions subjectively experienced as free identified a postcentral area distinct from the areas typically considered to be involved in free action. Thus, the brain correlates of subjective feeling of free action were not directly related to any established brain correlates of objectively-defined free action. Our results call into question traditional assumptions about the relation between subjective experience of choosing and activity in the brain’s so-called voluntary motor areas. (shrink)

Arguments for the inherent value, equality of interests,or rights of non-human animals have presented a strong challenge for the anthropocentric worldview. However, they have been met with criticism.One form of criticism maintains that,regardless of their theoretical consistency,these 'pro-animal arguments' cannot be accepted due to their absurdity. Often, particularly inter-species interest conflicts are brought to the fore: if pro-animal arguments were followed,we could not solve interest conflicts between species,which is absurd. Because of this absurdity, the arguments need to be abandoned. The (...) paper analyses the strength, background and relevance of this 'argument from absurdity'. It is claimed that in all of the three areas mentioned above, the argument faces severe difficulties. (shrink)

The critical examination of current hypotheses is one of the key ways in which scientific fields develop and grow. Therefore, any critique, including Haidle and Schlaudt’s article, “Where Does Cumulative Culture Begin? A Plea for a Sociologically Informed Perspective,” represents a welcome addition to the literature. However, critiques must also be evaluated. In their article, Haidle and Schlaudt review some approaches to culture and cumulative culture in both human and nonhuman primates. H&S discuss the “zone of latent solutions” hypothesis as (...) applied to nonhuman primates and stone-toolmaking premodern hominins. Here, we will evaluate whether H&S’s critique addresses its target. (shrink)

: Animal ethics has presented convincing arguments for the individual value of animals. Animals are not only valuable instrumentally or indirectly, but in themselves. Less has been written about interest conflicts between humans and other animals, and the use of animals in practice. The motive of this paper is to analyze different approaches to interest conflicts. It concentrates on six models, which are the rights model, the interest model, the mental complexity model, the special relations model, the multi-criteria model, and (...) the contextual model. Of these, the contextual model is the strongest, and carries clear consequences for the practical use of animals. (shrink)

La relación entre maternidad y trabajo ha sido materia de políticas públicas desde comienzos del siglo XX, pero en las últimas décadas ha adquirido nuevas connotaciones por el aumento de la participación laboral femenina. Ello no ha conducido a una eliminación de las discriminaciones que enfrentan las trabajadoras por su condición (real o potencial) de madres, ni a una organización del mercado de trabajo que permita articular demandas laborales y familiares, ni una redistribución del trabajo reproductivo. Para analizar cómo actores (...) involucrados en la formulación de políticas relacionadas con esta temática concebían la relación entre trabajo y maternidad y las tensiones que derivaban de ella, se entrevistó a un grupo de actores sociales provenientes de tres ámbitos. Dos ideas caracterizan sus concepciones: las normas de protección a la maternidad en el trabajo afectan negativamente la empleabilidad femenina y la relación maternidad trabajo es difícil porque la organización del mercado de trabajo dificulta la articulación de responsabilidades laborales y familiares. Respecto de las tensiones, se constataron en diferentes dimensiones: económica, demográfica, ejercicio de derechos y sociocultural. (shrink)

This article deals with various responses to the phenomenon of Orientalism. Since the publication of Edward Said s book _Orientalism_, there has been an ongoing discussion about the influence of Orientalism on contemporary social sciences in the East. In the West, Orientalism was an original theory, but in the East its acceptance was tantamount to an assimilation of foreign point of view on social reality. I argue that it is a symptom of provincialism among scientists from the East. Even though (...) most of them tried to overcome Orientalism, they used the same categories and methodology. In this sense they repeated its mistakes and misunderstandings. This article analyzes different attempts of overcoming Orientalism and shows why they are provincial. (shrink)

In an engineering writing course whose theme is climate change and engineering, I foreground climate change as an ethical problem. At the end of the semester, I ask students to compare their attitudes toward climate change from when they began the course to their attitudes at the end. Some report that, as a result of knowing more about the difficulty and scale of the problem, they have become more pessimistic about our ability to solve it. Climate change despair has been (...) studied from several disciplinary perspectives. Here, I approach the issue from an ethical perspective. My question is, how should I address students’ affective responses to climate change? After providing background on the course and the students’ attitudes, I review the literature on the ethics of climate change despair, hope, and false hope. I then argue for a pedagogy that guides students toward a critical hope and engineering praxis. (shrink)

In an engineering writing course whose theme is climate change and engineering, I foreground climate change as an ethical problem. At the end of the semester, I ask students to compare their attitudes toward climate change from when they began the course to their attitudes at the end. Some report that, as a result of knowing more about the difficulty and scale of the problem, they have become more pessimistic about our ability to solve it. Climate change despair has been (...) studied from several disciplinary perspectives. Here, I approach the issue from an ethical perspective. My question is, how should I address students’ affective responses to climate change? After providing background on the course and the students’ attitudes, I review the literature on the ethics of climate change despair, hope, and false hope. I then argue for a pedagogy that guides students toward a critical hope and engineering praxis. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the significance of mood for a philosophical approach to emotion. Are moods problematic because they constrain us in an affective cage? Or do they rather give us access to the world? The starting point for this investigation is the work of Martin Heidegger: I analyze what he defines as vorweltlich arguing that this term refers to the emotional dimension of human existence, in particular, to mood, or, in Heideggerian terms, Stimmung. Human existence is not just (...) a neutral being-there but a being-affected, a being-in-a-mood. I then move on to consider the role of mood in relation to the concept of transcendence, providing an analysis of two main source of inspiration in Heidegger’s thought: Augustine and Aristotle. This allows us to distinguish three aspects of Stimmung : Stimmung as openness to the world, Stimmung as teleological movement, and Stimmung as event of ontological difference. In the final section, I discuss the contribution of these aspects of Heidegger’s thought to the contemporary debate on emotions. (shrink)

The book is an introduction to key concepts of Indian Philosophy, seen from the perspective of the influential school of Pr?bh?kara M?m??s? (flourished from the 7th until the 20th c. AD). It includes the edition and translation of R?m?nuj?c?rya's ??straprameyapariccheda.

An analysis of three pictorial works by Ugo Nespolo is put forward: "Barbe posticce" (1977); "Guardar Manzoni" (1974); "Il museo: Fontana" (1975). It is claimed that such works embody meditations on the concept and the varieties of representation, that they prompt critical reflections on the role of museums in art-making, and that they suggest an alternative route to that of the 'dematerialization' of the art object for the understanding of contemporary art.

L’arte contemporanea è caleidoscopica: può catapultarci in ambienti complessi o minimali richiedendo la nostra attiva partecipazione, ancorarsi a luoghi particolari, porci di fronte a opere apparentemente indistinguibili da oggetti ed eventi della vita quotidiana, appropriarsi illegalmente degli spazi pubblici, e così via. Questo volume muove dalla premessa che uno dei compiti della filosofia dell’arte sia prestare attenzione a specifiche pratiche artistiche e a teorie sull’arte avanzate in altri ambiti di ricerca, per poi organizzare in maniera perspicua la molteplicità dei dati (...) raccolti. I filosofi possono così costruire teorie quanto più generali possibile per cercare di spiegare ciò che emerge da tali dati. Le ricerche qui presentate si concentrano su alcuni fenomeni, accuratamente scelti nell’ampio panorama dell’arte contemporanea: l’installation art e i suoi rapporti con l’installazione espositiva, l’arte sito-specifica e la sua appartenenza alla più ampia tradizione dell’arte situata, il ruolo delle idee nell’arte concettuale e il carattere sovversivo della street art. Sfruttando l’efficacia esplicativa del concetto di medium artistico, nonché della individuazione di forme e generi d’arte, le analisi qui presentate indagano le ragioni per cui in queste pratiche artistiche sono centrali l’esperienza dello spazio, l’interazione fra opere e pubblico, i luoghi d’installazione delle opere e gli oggetti come portatori di significati. (shrink)

A common Western assumption is that animals cannot be persons. Even in animal ethics, the concept of personhood is often avoided. At the same time, many in cognitive ethology argue that animals do have minds, and that animal ethics presents convincing arguments supporting the individual value of animals. Although “animal personhood” may seem to be an absurd notion, more attention needs to placed on the reasons why animals can or cannot be included in the category of persons. Of three different (...) approaches to personhood—the perfectionist approach, the humanistic approach, and the interactive approach—the third approach is the strongest. Personhood defined via interaction opens new doors for animal ethics. (shrink)

To date, 1.7 million US military service personnel have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those, one in five are suffering from diagnosable combat-stress related psychological injuries including Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). All indications are that the mental health toll of the current conflicts on US troops and the medical systems that care for them will only increase. Against this backdrop, research suggesting that the common class of drugs known as beta-blockers might prevent the onset of PTSD is drawing (...) much interest. I urge caution against accepting too quickly the use of beta-blockers for dealing with the psychological injuries that combat experiences can wreak. Beta-blockers are thought to work by disrupting the formation of emotionally disturbing memories that typically occur in the wake of traumatic events and that in some people manifest as PTSD. Focusing on a single dimension of soldiers' experience in combat, namely, their perpetration of other-directed violence, I argue that some of the emotional memories blunted by beta-blockers play important roles in the recovery of moral aspects of soldiers' selves damaged by experiences of combat violence — specifically, in the achievement of a state of grace— and, therefore, that the use of beta-blockers may come with distinct moral costs. (shrink)

Wilderness experiences were celebrated by the Great Romantics, and figures such as Wordsworth and Thoreau emphasized the need to seek direct contact with the non-human world. Later deep ecologists accentuated the way in which wilderness experiences can spark moral epiphanies and lead to action on behalf of the natural environment. In recent years, psychological studies have manifested how the observations made by the Romantics, nature authors and deep ecologists apply to laypeople: contact with the wilderness does tend to lead to (...) epistemological, ontological and normative ‘epiphanies.’ This paper analyses four different umbrella terms with which to make sense of the content of wilderness experiences. First, mystical experience, peak experience and elevation are explored. Although all three offer promising models for explicating the nature of wilderness experiences, they also run the risk of reducing those experiences to sheer experiential hedonism.... (shrink)

Rāmānujācārya’s Tantrarahasya, a philosophical treatise mainly dedicated to the hermeneutics and epistemology of the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā School, might be considered hardly more than a jigsaw of reused passages, since one third of it has a direct source, and a further third has its roots in interlanguage usage. It is thus a perfect case study for investigating the compositional habits of philosophical authors in pre-modern śāstra literature. The article analyses the formal aspects of textual reuse by Rāmānujācārya and draws some general (...) conclusions regarding the author’s intellectual affiliation to Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā on the basis of the way he reuses his school’s texts as compared to the reuse of other schools’ texts. A final section discusses the possibility of generalising these results to the approach to textual reuse of the whole Pūrva Mīmāṃsā. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical discussion on the nature of the imagination has been influenced by recent empirical work in cognitive science. Our imaginative and emotional engagement with works of fiction has been explained by appealing to the similarities between our ordinary cognitive functioning and the workings of our imagination. Believing and imagining, it is argued, are governed by a “single code.” I argue against this claim, and suggest that our imagination – and in particular our literary imagination – in many respects functions (...) very differently from ordinary cognition. (shrink)

Neste e-book, apresentamos parte deste desenvolvimento, organizado conforme as três áreas de investigação do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos Linguísticos (PosLin), da Faculdade de Letras (FALE), na Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). Os 23 textos que compõem este volume são resultado de pesquisas de mestrado e de doutorado desenvolvidas no PosLin e são apresentados por textos breves de professores-pesquisadores convidados e/ou que atuaram como debatedores no XII SETED.

Details goverment, private, and international response to the policy recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.

Traditionally animal ethics has criticised the anthropocentric worldview according to which humans differ categorically from the rest of the nature in some morally relevant way. It has claimed that even though there are differences, there are also crucial similarities between humans and animals that make it impossible to draw a categorical distinction between humans who are morally valuable and animals which are not. This argument, according to which animals and humans share common characteristics that lead to moral value, is at (...) the heart of animal ethics. Lately the emphasis on similarity has been under attack. It has been claimed that the search for similarity is itself part of anthropocentric morality, since only those like us are valuable. It also has been claimed that true respect for animals comes from recognising their difference and 'otherness', not from seeing similarities. This paper analyses the new 'other animal ethics' by critically examining its basis and consequences. The conclusion is that despite the fact that other animal ethics is right in demanding respect also for difference, it remains both vague and contradictory in its theoretical basis, and leads to undesirable consequences from the perspective of animal welfare. (shrink)

Contemporary literature includes a wide variety of definitions of empathy. At the same time, the revival of sentimentalism has proposed that empathy serves as a necessary criterion of moral agency. The paper explores four common definitions in order to map out which of them best serves such agency. Historical figures are used as the backdrop against which contemporary literature is analysed. David Hume’s philosophy is linked to contemporary notions of affective and cognitive empathy, Adam Smith’s philosophy to projective empathy, and (...) Max Scheler’s account to embodied empathy. Whereas cognitive and projective empathy suffer from detachment and atomism, thereby providing poor support for the type of other-directedness and openness entailed by moral agency, embodied and affective empathy intrinsically facilitate these factors, and hence are viewed as fruitful candidates. However, the theory of affective empathy struggles to explain why the experience of empathy includes more than pure affective mimicry, whilst embodied empathy fails to take into account forms of empathy that do not include contextual, narrative information. In order to navigate through these difficulties, Edith Stein’s take on non-primordial experience is used as a base upon which a definition of affective empathy, inclusive of an embodied dimension, and founded on a movement between resonation and response, is sketched. It is argued that, of the four candidates, this new definition best facilitates moral agency. (shrink)

Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture explores the multifaceted moral meanings allocated to non-human suffering in contemporary Western culture.

For more than a decade, Ellen Fox and her colleagues have proclaimed the importance of evaluating ethics consultation services (ECSs). In their article, “Ethics Consultation in United States Hospit...