Within feminist literature from the early 1970s to this day, assisted reproductive technologies have been largely known to divide, replace or eliminate biological motherhood. For example, while in the past biological motherhood was considered a continuous experience, in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and IVF using egg donation allowed a split between two biological mothers, one providing eggs (genetic mother) and the other one gestation (gestational mother). This split was considered irreparable: the genetic mother could not be also gestational, and vice versa. (...) On the contrary, this paper aims to show that assisted reproductive technologies may also have a constructive potential towards biological motherhood(s). To explain how it could be possible, two existing techniques are explored: the first is maternal spindle transfer, which allows a double genetic motherhood; the second is reciprocal effortless IVF, which supposedly enables a double gestational motherhood. While in the first part, these techniques are examined singularly, in the second part a feasible combination of them is speculated. The idea is that assisted reproductive technologies could ‘recombine’ genetic and gestational motherhood in two figures that include both, namely in two ‘complete’ biological mothers, both genetic and gestational. (shrink)

Epigenetic research has brought several important technological achievements, including identifying epigenetic clocks and signatures, and developing epigenetic editing. The potential military applications of such technologies we discuss are stratifying soldiers’ health, exposure to trauma using epigenetic testing, information about biological clocks, confirming child soldiers’ minor status using epigenetic clocks, and inducing epigenetic modifications in soldiers. These uses could become a reality. This article presents a comprehensive literature review, and analysis by interdisciplinary experts of the scientific, legal, ethical, and societal issues (...) surrounding epigenetics and the military. Notwithstanding the potential benefit from these applications, our findings indicate that the current lack of scientific validation for epigenetic technologies suggests a careful scientific review and the establishment of a robust governance framework before consideration for use in the military. In this article, we highlight general concerns about the application of epigenetic technologies in the military context, especially discrimination and data privacy issues if soldiers are used as research subjects. We also highlight the potential of epigenetic clocks to support child soldiers’ rights and ethical questions about using epigenetic engineering for soldiers’ enhancement and conclude with considerations for an ethical framework for epigenetic applications in the military, defense, and security contexts. (shrink)

The book examines one of the most contested topics in linguistics and cognitive science: the role of recursion in language. It offers a precise account of what recursion is, what role it should play in cognitive theories of human knowledge, and how it manifests itself in the mental representations of language and other cognitive domains.

This article aims to analyze how the so-called ‘pedagogy of work’ attempts to answer the challenges of unemployment and job insecurity characterizing the labor market in contemporary society. The authors reflect on the concepts of nihilist pedagogies and the ‘end of work’ by distinguishing two approaches: an active and a passive nihilist pedagogy. The passive approach, based on resignation, is opposed to an active attitude in which labor pedagogy offers tools to address current challenges. The authors support the idea that (...) pedagogy as a human-improving science cannot adopt the position of passive nihilism in interpreting work in contemporary society. To better understand the dynamics related to job insecurity and corrective solutions by pedagogy, the authors analyzed the thoughts of three contemporary philosophers: Zygmunt Bauman, Jeremy Rifkin, and Dominique Méda. These authors redefined the concept of work in connection with the transformations because of globalization, the advent of new communication technologies, and digital work. These changes have redefined not only the concept of work but also the models of work pedagogy in the Western world: capitalism and Marxism. Considering the current challenges, the pedagogy of work needs to be rethought, starting from the problem of employability and focusing on the new occupations in demand in the Internet age. By integrating ideas on interpreting work from the theories of Bauman, Rifkin, and Méda, it is possible to propose a pedagogy of work in the age of change and to outline possible values of education inspired by it. (shrink)

Abstract One perspective in contemporary linguistic theory defends the idea that the language faculty may result from the combinations of diverse systems and principles. As a case study, I critique a recent proposal by Juan Uriagereka and colleagues according to which the evolutionary emergence of the language faculty can be identified through studying the computational structure of knots as present within the fossil record. I here argue that the ability to conceptualize and, thereby, create knots is not parasitic on the (...) ability to conceptualize and create language. On the contrary, these two domains are entirely distinct, unrelatable in terms of their computational complexity, expressive power or, most importantly, in terms of their requisite mental operations and principles. The overall approach defended here can profitably be employed in the study of the relationship between language and thought, as I briefly discuss in the case of the role of language in spatial reorientation. (shrink)

Language employs various coordinators to connect propositions, a subset of which are “logical” in nature and thus analogous to the truth operators of formal logic. We here focus on two linguistic connectives and their negations: conjunction _and_ and (inclusive) disjunction _or_. Linguistic connectives exhibit a truth-conditional component as part of their meaning (their semantics), but their use in context can give rise to various implicatures and presuppositions (the domain of pragmatics) as well as to inferences that go beyond semantic/pragmatic properties (...) (the result of reasoning processes). We provide a comprehensive review of the role of the logical connectives in language and argue that three sets of factors—semantic, pragmatic, and those related to reasoning—are separate and separable, though some details may differ cross-linguistically. As a way to showcase the argument, we present two experiments in language comprehension in Spanish wherein pragmatic content was minimised and reasoning processes neutered, thus potentially highlighting what might be the default meanings of the connectives under study. In Experiment 1 we show that the conjunctive reading of inclusive disjunction is available in positive contexts other than in syntactically intricate cases such as downward entailing and free choice contexts, contrary to what has been claimed in the literature. In Experiment 2 we show that negated conjunctions and disjunctions in Spanish can easily receive the same interpretation when contrasted against the same context and, moreover, that these interpretations match those available in English, despite claims from the literature that linguistic connectives and local negation interact differently in English and Romance languages. (shrink)

"La Nouvelle Alliance (1979), by physicist Ilya Prigogine and philosopher Isabelle Stengers, is both a book on the history and philosophy of thermodynamics and a philosophical essay on man's place in nature. It has given rise to lively interdisciplinary controversy.".

It is widely held that all lies are assertions: the traditional definition of lying entails that, in order to lie, speakers have to assert something they believe to be false. It is also widely held that assertion contrasts with presupposition and, in particular, that one cannot assert something by presupposing it. Together, these views imply that speakers cannot lie with presuppositions—a view that Andreas Stokke has recently explicitly defended. The aim of this paper is to argue that speakers can lie (...) with presuppositions, and to discuss some of the implications this outcome has for current research on lying, assertion and presupposition. (shrink)

This note studies the 1650 edition of Hugo Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis. Using online and card catalogues, we have located eighty-nine copies, thirty-seven of which we examined in person, with an additional six fully digitised copies online. We hope that this research note on the preliminary results will generate greater interest in this unduly neglected edition. The note shows how, despite the connection established in the history of seventeenth-century politics that emphasized the ties between Grotius and the Peace (...) of Westphalia, the reception of Grotius’s 1650 edition bore no relation to the debates at Osnabrück and Münster. However, this is an influential edition, cherished by collectors and authors. According to our findings, it would be reproduced in a number of later reprints. (shrink)

This research note is the eighth instalment in our series of preliminary findings on the census and study of the reception of De iure belli ac pacis. The note presents a bibliographical description of Laurentius’ 1647 re-issue of the 1631 edition by Blaeu, considers Laurentius’ motivation and methods of production, lists and maps the currently known twenty-three surviving copies, and briefly describes two notable exemplars.

Adler and Barnett demonstrate how changes occurring in international politics create the nostalgia of security communities, a concept made prominent by Karl Deutsch nearly forty years ago.

This research note offers a contextual overview of the printing history of Johann Blaeu’s 1646 octavo edition of Hugo Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis (ibp). The note examines the printing process of the last edition that was prepared while Grotius was still alive, though it was published after his death. The note also sheds light on the theological dimension of some readers’ annotations, and concludes by discussing the impact this edition had on the modern versions of the text.

The distinction between lying and mere misleading is commonly tied to the distinction between saying and conversationally implicating. Many definitions of lying are based on the idea that liars say something they believe to be false, while misleaders put forward a believed-false conversational implicature. The aim of this paper is to motivate, spell out, and defend an alternative approach, on which lying and misleading differ in terms of commitment: liars, but not misleaders, commit themselves to something they believe to be (...) false. This approach entails that lying and misleading involve speech-acts of different force. While lying requires the committal speech-act of asserting, misleading involves the non-committal speech-act of suggesting. The approach leads to a broader definition of lying that can account for lies that are told while speaking non-literally or with the help of presuppositions, and it allows for a parallel definition of misleading, which so far is lacking in the debate. (shrink)

Lobina, David_The Origins of Grammar, by James R Hurford.

This paper defends stage theory against the argument from diachronic counting. It argues that stage theorists can appeal to quantifier domain restriction in order to accommodate intuitions about diachronic counting sentences. Two approaches involving domain restriction are discussed. According to the first, domains of counting are usually restricted to stages at the time of utterance. This approach explains intuitions in many cases, but is theoretically costly and delivers wrong counts if diachronic counting is combined with fission or fusion. On the (...) second approach, domains of counting are usually restricted in an indeterminate way, so as to include at most one member of any maximal class of counterpart-interrelated stages (with respect to a certain utterance). This view can accommodate all the relevant intuitions about counting sentences, and it fits well with a new stage-theoretic view of reference that allows speakers to refer to both present and past stages. (shrink)

The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals’ psychosocial functioning was widely attested during the last year. However, the extent to which individual differences are associated with adaptive and maladaptive outcomes during quarantine in Italy remains largely unexplored. Using a person-oriented approach, the present study explored the association of personality profiles, based on three broad individual dispositions and two self-efficacy beliefs in the emotional area, with adaptive and maladaptive outcomes during the first Italian lockdown. In doing so, we focused (...) also on how different age groups differently faced the pandemic. The study was conducted through an online survey from May to June 2020 and included 1341 participants living in Italy, divided into two groups: 737 young adults aged 18–35 and 604 adults aged 36–60 years old. Latent Profile Analysis identified three personality profiles: resilient, vulnerable, and moderate. A subsequent path analysis model showed that the resilient profile was positively associated with prosocial behavior as an indicator of adaptive outcome, and negatively associated with three maladaptive outcomes: interpersonal aggression, depressive symptoms, and anxiety problems. Contrarily, the vulnerable profile resulted negatively associated with prosocial behavior and positively associated with the three maladaptive outcomes. Finally, regarding age group differences, young adults belonging to the vulnerable profile showed a greater association especially with interpersonal aggression, depression, and anxiety problems, as compared to adults belonging to the same profile. Overall, the results of the present study highlighted the importance to analyze individual functioning during an isolation period by using a person-oriented approach. Findings evidenced the existence of three different profiles and subsequent path analysis revealed, especially for the vulnerable profile and young adults, a greater maladaptive consequence of the quarantine. The practical implications will be discussed. (shrink)

This is the fourth instalment of our census and study of the reception of the first nine editions of De iure belli ac pacis. Here we focus on the two versions that Johannes Janssonius issued in 1632, one with a copy of Mare liberum attached to it. This report outlines the place of the 1632 Janssonius edition in the context of his long-running rivalry with the printer Willem Blaeu and his firm. It then explores the typographical differences between the two (...) issues, their causes, and their significance for our understanding of the reception of the text. Finally, it provides the preliminary results of the census concerning the circulation and provenance of the fifty-three copies of this edition that we have found. We hope that this research note on the preliminary results will attract interest in this edition and that readers will kindly inform us of further copies. (shrink)

This article provides new information on the printing and readership history of the fifth edition of De iure belli ac pacis. Building on our earlier research on the way that the dispute between Willem Janszoon Blaeu and Johannes Janssonius influenced the publication of the 1631 edition of the text, this article studies how Blaeu harnessed his position to make the 1632 edition more reputable than the earlier version published by his rival. The article considers how, over four centuries, readers have (...) appreciated the quality of the production and three engaged with the text for radically different ends: Remigius Faesch, Baron von Boineburg, and Wendell Phillips. The article draws attention to the changes and continuities in reading and annotation patterns and offers preliminary insights into the themes that these influential readers focused on. We hope that it will inspire readers to bring further copies to our attention. (shrink)

This article constitutes the sixth instalment in our series on the census and study of the reception of the first nine editions of De iure belli ac pacis. This edition has long held a prominent place in studies and editions of Grotius’s work since it was the last published during his lifetime. The report first outlines the genesis of the edition in the context of Grotius’s relationship with Johann Blaeu (1596–1673) and Cornelius Blaeu (1610–1642), who had recently inherited the Blaeu (...) print firm from their father Willem. It then elucidates a number of crucial ways in which the 1642 edition differed from the five previous editions, especially via the addition of an extensive new series of annotations to ibp and a separate set addressed to the Epistle of Philemon. Finally, it concludes by providing the preliminary results of the census concerning the one hundred and twenty-one copies we have found. (shrink)

This work investigates the relationship between goals and mitigation behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. Study 1 identified goals ascribed to following and violating mitigation-related indications. Study 2 investigated the structure of and link between COVID-related goals and behaviors in a large community sample. Our results showed substantial relationships between goals and behaviors. Goals were best described by a bi-dimensional structure, whereas behaviors clustered into a three-component structure. Hierarchical multiple regressions demonstrated the incremental validity of goals in the prediction (...) of behaviors. Network analysis suggested that goals imbued with social content were more directly related to both risky and preventive behaviors. Motivational aspects emerged as important contributors to the organization of behaviors in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Combining two thoughts into a compound mental representation is a central feature of our verbal and non-verbal logical abilities. We here approach this issue by focusing on the contingency that while natural languages have typically lexicalised only two of the possible 16 binary connectives from formal logic to express compound thoughts—namely, the coordinatorsandandor—some of the remainder appear to be entertainable in a non-verbal, conceptual representational system—alanguage of thought—and this suggests a theoretical split between the “lexicalisation” of the connectives and the (...) “learnability” of invented words corresponding to unlexicalised connectives. In avisual worldexperiment aimed at tracking comprehension-related as well as reasoning-related aspects of the capacity to represent compound thoughts, we found that participants are capable of learning and interpreting a made-up word standing for logic's NAND operator, a result that indicates that unlexicalised logical connectives are not only conceptually available, but can also be mapped onto new function words, as in the case of coordinators, or connectives, a class of words that do not usually admit new coinages. (shrink)

Many recent definitions of lying are based on the notion of what is said. This paper argues that says-based definitions of lying cannot account for lies involving non-literal speech, such as metaphor, hyperbole, loose use or irony. It proposes that lies should instead be defined in terms of assertion, where what is asserted need not coincide with what is said. And it points to possible implications this outcome might have for the ethics of lying.

ABSTRACT This article analyzes a polemic of Italian Humanism around Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). In that period, intellectuals such as Cristoforo Landino (1424-1498) and Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) interpreted Dante’s writing through the platonic prism of the Phaedrus, that is, as someone who was granted the grace to contemplate the divine and the power to describe it. Decades earlier, however, Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) and Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444) had already attributed to Dante the merit of focusing on formal studies and, with that, being (...) able to develop expressive artifices to his poetry on its own. For the analysis of the different readings, excerpts in which Dante gives evidence of his path and intellectual maturity will be observed, as well as those in which it is possible to observe the poet’s role in the dissemination of formal knowledge in line with his ethical values. (shrink)

In arguing against a supposed ambiguity, philosophers often rely on the zeugma test. In an application of the zeugma test, a supposedly ambiguous expression is placed in a sentence in which several of its supposed meanings are forced together. If the resulting sentence sounds zeugmatic, that is taken as evidence for ambiguity; if it does not sound zeugmatic, that is taken as evidence against ambiguity. The aim of this article is to show that arguments based on the second direction of (...) the test are misguided: ambiguous expressions, and in particular philosophically contested ones, do not reliably lead to zeugmaticity, so an absence of zeugmaticity provides no meaningful evidence for an absence of ambiguity. (shrink)

Pictures are notably absent from the current debate about how to define lying. Theorists in this debate tend to focus on linguistic means of communication and do not consider the possibility of lying with photographs, drawings and other kinds of pictures. The aim of this paper is to show that such a narrow focus is misguided: there is a strong case to be made for the possibility of lying with pictures and this possibility allows for insights concerning the question of (...) how lying should be defined. (shrink)

Intentionalism is the view that demonstratives, gradable adjectives, quantifiers, modals and other context‐sensitive expressions are intention‐sensitive: their semantic value on a given use is fixed by speaker intentions. The first aim of this paper is to defend Intentionalism against three recent objections, according to which speakers at least sometimes do not have suitable intentions when using supposedly intention‐sensitive expressions. Its second aim is to thereby shed light on the so far little‐explored question of which kinds of intentions can be semantically (...) relevant. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Principles of Biomedical Ethics. By Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress.

ABSTRACT Copredication, as exhibited by sentences such as ‘That book is heavy but informative,’ is commonly seen as a phenomenon that is tied to sentences featuring polysemous expressions. David Liebesman and Ofra Magidor have recently attacked this view by arguing that ‘book’ has a single context-sensitive sense. The first aim of the present paper is to show that Liebesman and Magidor are wrong to claim that ‘book’ is univocal, but that they may nonetheless be right to question that copredication requires (...) polysemy. Its second aim is to consider implications of this result for the debates on copredication and on semantic variability. (shrink)

Where should we meet? This may seem like a trivial decision, mostly focused on convenience. However, location can represent integral values, attitudes, and priorities. Especially when the meeting i...

Hegel’s political philosophy regards the “corporation” as both a civil society association and an institution guaranteed under the constitution. The present article focuses on the concept of corporation as an institution of the ‘internal constitution’ by analysing some of the writings which go back to Hegel’s Heidelberg and Berlin phases, namely the Heidelberg review of the Proceedings of the Estates Assembly of the Kingdom of Württemberg, 1815–1816, his first lectures on the Philosophy of Rights, and the Elements of the Philosophy (...) of Rights. Notwithstanding the analysis shows that Hegel’s sophisticated constitutional culture is informed directly by, and developed along with, his involvement in the Württemberg’s political debates, yet his idea of State administration is far more elaborate than the constitutions of nineteenth-century German States which it does not, in fact, intend to merely reproduce. I shall argue that Hegel’s account of corporation is based on his specific understanding of European history and the related conceptualization of institution as a guarantee of freedom. Both history and theory are necessary tools to frame and comprehend the philosopher’s discussion of corporation, whose civil and institutional nature is essential to conceive the connection established between the government of civil society and legislative power. I contend that the role that Hegel attributes to corporations cannot be interpreted as an idea reflecting or inherited from the history of the German states, and that rather it represents the key to understanding his concept of patriotism and model of political representation via the assemblies of estates. From this perspective, it appears clear that the Hegelian theory of corporation is at the center of the philosopher’s diagnosis on the crisis and evolution of the modern State. (shrink)

In 1877 Erwin Rohde suggested the conjecture Argino instead of the manuscript reading argiro in Ampelius 8, 16. His conjecture did not find approval among editors of the late antique author and is virtually forgotten. A fresh look at Rohde’s suggestion shows, however, that it is convincing with regards to palaeography and consents with literary and epigraphical evidence. With Argino instead of a conjecture like Bargyliis, the passage is no more a testimony for the Carian city of Bargylia, but for (...) the Ionian Erythrae and its religious history (Aphrodite, Heracles, and the Sibyl). (shrink)

In the past few years, machine learning (ML) tools have been implemented with success in the medical context. However, several practitioners have raised concerns about the lack of transparency—at the algorithmic level—of many of these tools; and solutions from the field of explainable AI (XAI) have been seen as a way to open the ‘black box’ and make the tools more trustworthy. Recently, Alex London has argued that in the medical context we do not need machine learning tools to be (...) interpretable at the algorithmic level to make them trustworthy, as long as they meet some strict empirical desiderata. In this paper, we analyse and develop London’s position. In particular, we make two claims. First, we claim that London’s solution to the problem of trust can potentially address another problem, which is how to evaluate the reliability of ML tools in medicine for regulatory purposes. Second, we claim that to deal with this problem, we need to develop London’s views by shifting the focus from the opacity of algorithmic details to the opacity of the way in which ML tools are trained and built. We claim that to regulate AI tools and evaluate their reliability, agencies need an explanation of how ML tools have been built, which requires documenting and justifying the technical choices that practitioners have made in designing such tools. This is because different algorithmic designs may lead to different outcomes, and to the realization of different purposes. However, given that technical choices underlying algorithmic design are shaped by value-laden considerations, opening the black box of the design process means also making transparent and motivating (technical and ethical) values and preferences behind such choices. Using tools from philosophy of technology and philosophy of science, we elaborate a framework showing how an explanation of the training processes of ML tools in medicine should look like. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss some issues related to a recent trend in experimental philosophy (or x-phi), and try to show the reasons of its late (and scarce) involvement with aesthetics, compared to other areas of philosophical investigation. In order to do this, it is first necessary to ask how an autonomous experimental philosophy of aesthetics could be related to the long-standing tradition of psychological experimental aesthetics. After distinguishing between a “narrow” and a “broad” approach of experimental philosophy, I (...) will then make a distinction between topics in aesthetics pertaining to perceptual and cognitive processes, and traditional issues involved in the analysis of general and culturally-laden concepts. The narrow program of experimental philosophy, focused on the investigation of folk intuitions, is particularly effective only when two general conditions are met: the use of hypothetical scenarios (testing of thought experiments) and the heuristic role of folk intuitions in drawing philosophically relevant conclusions. I will argue that, when aesthetics is concerned, these requirements are not easily met. These difficulties notwithstanding, I will support a pluralistic view where aesthetics is revealed as an instructive example of how experimental approaches and traditional “armchair” philosophy integrate, and enrich each other. (shrink)