R??SUM???? travers l?????tude de la correspondance philosophique entre Descartes et Henry More, je souhaiterais montrer que les th??mes centraux en sont la consid??ration de la nature de l???espace et le statut de l???infini, bien que la pol??mique aborde??galement le probl??me ontologique de la distinction entre l?????tendue et la pens??e, et les questions physiques de la n??gation du vide et de l???atomisme. More rejette l???hypoth??se cart??sienne d???un univers ind??fini, qu???il consid??re??tre une mani??re d??tourn??e de postuler le caract??re infini de l???univers, ce (...) qui revient?? attribuer tout autant l???infinit???? la mati??re qu????? Dieu, d???o?? le fait que Descartes soit un mat??rialiste selon Henry More. ABSTRACT The correspondence between Descartes and More covers a diversity of each author???s fundamental philosophical views. Their polemics range over not only general aspects of physics, but also extend to cosmology and theology. On the one hand, we have God as infinite and His creation as indefinite for Descartes; on the other hand, God as extant, ubiquitous and omnipresent, and His creation as limited for Henry More. It is this last problem that constitutes the focus of my essay, strictly speaking??? the problem of the universe as infinite. (shrink)

This is a critical review of Manuel García-Carpintero's "Las palabras, las ideas y las cosas".

In this chapter, I focus on the faculties by which we gain knowledge, namely, sensibility and the understanding, as well as on the methodological framework within which Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz examines them. I stress the importance that the author gives to sensibility and the physiological apparatus that grounds and explains sensation.With respect to her conception of understanding, I will show that it is both the sign of man’s filiation with God and a faculty that displays deficiencies and (...) limitations with respect to the difficult task of attaining knowledge.Finally, I examine Sor Juana’s criticism both of the Neoplatonic method, which looks for a vision of the universe as a whole, as well as of the deductive method of the Aristotelian- Scholastic tradition, which attempts to reduce the unmanageable diversity of beings to some specific characteristics and laws.My conclusion is that Sor Juana shares with modern philosophers the critical attitude against tradition; she holds that traditional methods do not enable us to reach knowledge about either the remotest causes or the closest effects. On my view, Sor Juana takes an epistemological approach to philosophy, as do Bacon and Descartes, but she does not propose a new method; this is not because of some radical skepticism on her part, but because of the enormity of the task of the human mind achieving complete knowledge. (shrink)

En esta nota crítica (i) se hace una breve descripción de cada uno de los artículos que componen Orayen: de la forma lógica al significado, (ii) se señalan algunas cuestiones que no están claras en ellos o en las réplicas de Orayen y, (iii) en la medida de lo posible, se indica si los autores desarrollan ulteriormente los problemas abordados en sus artículos. The aim of this critical note is threefold: (i) it briefly describes and comments on each of the (...) articles of Orayen: de la forma lógica al significado; (ii) identifies some issues that may not be clear enough or not fully developed whether in the articles or even in Orayen's replies; (iii) as far as possible, it refers to further studies made by the authors themselves on the same, or quite related, subjects addressed by them in their papers. (shrink)

This article provides an analysis of the perception of fear in nightlife spaces, its relationship with sexual violence and the strategies that young people implement to combat these situations in two provinces of Andalusia, Spain. To this end, qualitative research was carried out through in-depth interviews and discussion groups with 73 boys and girls between the ages of 16 and 22. The article asserts that there are gender differences in the spaces of fear. Girls are the ones who experience fear (...) the most when they walk alone, and at specific times – a feeling that is made worse in specific public spaces. The study results show that girls’ fear is associated with sexual assault and boys’ fear with robberies or fights. Results show that three main types of strategies are used in the face of these fears: avoidance, confronting risks and empowerment. All these strategies include the use of new communication technologies. This article seeks to provide a theoretical contribution to enhancing a gender perspective in the field of urban geography. (shrink)

Voltaire historien de la philosophie. De l'Antiquité au Grand Siècle Renan Laruc, Porphyre de Tyr, héros voltairien; Marc-André Nadeau, Défense et critique de Montaigne dans les Lettres philosophiques; Véronique Le Ru, Voltaire, lecteur de Descartes; Gerhardt Stenger, Un philosophe peut en cacher un autre: Malebranche et Spinoza dans Tout en Dieu; Lorenzo Bianchi, Voltaire lecteur et critique de Bayle; Miguel Benitez, Locke, Voltaire et la matière pensante; Claire Fauvergue, Voltaire et l'idée d'automate. Voltaire et la philosophie des Lumières Debora Sicco, (...) Voltaire champion de Chastellux contre Montesquieu ; Marie Leca-Tsiomis, Voltaire, philosophe selon Diderot; Sévérine Denieul, Casanova lecteur et critique de Voltaire; Main Sandrier, Lectures athées de Voltaire: la duplicité du philosophe; Rodrigo Brandào, Job, Voltaire et Kant ou deux perspectives sur la souffrance et le mal; Linda Gil, Condorcet éditeur de Voltaire: une lecture dialogique dans les OEuvres complètes. Voltaire philosophe: histoire, morale et politique Jean Goldzink, Déisme et récits voltairiens ; Maria das Graças de Souza, Voltaire philosophe de l'histoire: autour de l'Essai sur les moeurs; Vladimir de Oliva Mota, Les fondements transcendants de la morale chez Voltaire; Maria Laura Lanzillo, La philosophie politique de Voltaire. De sa théorie de l'État à sa conception de la tolérance; Baldine Saint Girons, Voltaire et l'autocritique de la philosophie. La postérité philosophique de Voltaire Alain Sager, Voltaire à la lumière du concept d'ironie chez Kierkegaard; Guillaume Métayer, Voltaire philosophe, via Nietzsche? La préhistoire de l'épistémè; Danilo Bilate, Les "nouvelles Lumières" et l'attitude voltairienne chez Nietzsche; Abderhaman Messaoudi, Voltaire philosophe. Les enjeux d'une réévaluation."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Over the last five decades, philosophers of language have looked into the mechanisms for doing things with words. The same attention has not been devoted to how to undo those things, once they have been done. This paper identifies and examines three strategies to make one’s speech acts undone—namely, Annulment, Retraction, and Amendment. In annulling an act, a speaker brings to light its fatal flaws. Annulment amounts to recognizing an act as null, whereas retraction and amendment amount to making it (...) null. Speakers employ retraction to cancel the deontic updates engendered by a given act. They instead use amendment to adjust its degree of strength. I will argue that annulling, retracting, and amending are second-order speech acts, whose felicity conditions vary with the type of illocution they operate on. Undoing is therefore conceived of as a form of doing. Furthermore, I claim that, in calling off our acts, we undo the conventional or illocutionary effects of our words while leaving intact their past causal or perlocutionary outcomes. (shrink)

Patient and citizen participation is now regarded as central to the promotion of sustainable health and health care. Involvement efforts create and encounter many diverse ethical challenges that have the potential to enhance or undermine their success. This article examines different expressions of patient and citizen participation and the support health ethics offers. It is contended that despite its prominence and the link between patient empowerment and autonomy, traditional bioethics is insufficient to guide participation efforts. In addition, the turn to (...) a “social paradigm” of ethics in examinations of biotechnologies and public health does not provide an account of values that is commensurable with the pervasive autonomy paradigm. This exacerbates rather than eases tensions for patients and citizens endeavoring to engage with health. Citizen and patient participation must have a significant influence on the way we do health ethics if its potential is to be fulfilled. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between structural explanation and the New Mechanistic account of explanation. The aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, to argue that some phenomena in the domain of fundamental physics, although mechanically brute, are structurally explained; and secondly, by elaborating on the contrast between SE and mechanistic explanation to better clarify some features of SE. Finally, this paper will argue that, notwithstanding their apparently antithetical character, SE and ME can be reconciled within a unified account of (...) general scientific explanation. (shrink)

Is religious faith consistent with being an intellectually virtuous thinker? In seeking to answer this question, one quickly finds others, each of which has been the focus of recent renewed attention by epistemologists: What is it to be an intellectually virtuous thinker? Must all reasonable belief be grounded in public evidence? Under what circumstances is a person rationally justified in believing something on trust, on the testimony of another, or because of the conclusions drawn by an intellectual authority? Can it (...) be reasonable to hold a belief on a topic over which there is significant, entrenched disagreement among informed inquirers, or should such disagreement lead all parties to modify or suspend their own judgments? Is there anything about faith that exempts it from measurement against such epistemic norms? And if we would so evaluate it, how exactly should we understand the intellectual commitments faith requires? The volume's introduction provides a roadmap of the central issues and controversies as currently discussed by philosophers. In fourteen new essays written to engage nonspecialists as well as philosophers working in religion and epistemology, a diverse and distinguished group of thinkers then consider the place of intellectual virtue in religious faith, exploring one or more of the specific issues noted above. (shrink)

There are many different interpretations of what the family should be – its desired member composition, its primary purpose, and its cultural significance – and many different examples of what families actually look like across the globe. I examine the most paradigmatic conceptions of the family that are based upon the supposed primary purpose that the family serves for its members and for the state. I then suggest that we ought to reconceptualize how we understand and define the family in (...) an effort to move away from these paradigmatic conceptions. This approach requires that we examine the way(s) in which the family has been defined descriptively – that is, how families have been defined historically – in an effort to determine what a normative theory of the family might look like. The goal of this inquiry is to define a family in terms of what it ought to be – a goal that moves our understanding of the family to a new conceptual landscape. I then present my own account of familial relations that aims to capture a normative understanding of the unique primary purpose that the family serves for its members. (shrink)

'This original discussion breaks new ground by thoroughly analyzing ethical and aesthetic values, centering on the concept of ecological integrity, that apply intrinsically to nature and that govern our rightful use of the environment. Those who have been waiting for an exciting account of the inherent structure and worth of ecological systems in relation to environmental policy will find it in this book.'-Mark Sagoff, Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Maryland at College Park.

The ambiguity regarding whether a given intervention is perceived as enhancement or as therapy might contribute to the angst that the public expresses with respect to endorsement of enhancement. We set out to develop empirical data that explored this. We used Amazon Mechanical Turk to recruit participants from Canada and the United States. Each individual was randomly assigned to read one vignette describing the use of a pill to enhance one of 12 cognitive, affective or social domains. The vignettes described (...) a situation in which an individual was using a pill to enhance the relevant domain under one of two possible enhancement conditions, one perceived as enhancing above the norm, what most people recognize as a clear case of enhancement, whereas the other perceived as enhancing towards the norm, with the individual using the enhancement having a modest, but subclinical deficit. Participants were asked how comfortable they were with the individual using the enhancement and about the impact the enhancement might have had in the individuals’ success in life. We found that irrespective of the domain to be enhanced, participants felt significantly more comfortable with ETN than with EAN, and they regarded the enhancement intervention as contributing to greater success in life with ETN rather than EAN. These data demonstrate that the therapy enhancement distinction is morally salient to the public, and that this distinction contributes to the angst that people feel when considering the propriety of CAS enhancement. (shrink)

Moorean constructions are famously odd: it is infelicitous to deny that you believe what you claim to be true. But what about claiming that p, only to immediately put into question your evidence in support of p? In this paper, we identify and analyse a class of quasi-Moorean constructions, which we label counterevidentials. Although odd, counterevidentials can be accommodated as felicitous attempts to mitigate one’s claim right after making it. We explore how counterevidentials differ from lexicalised mitigation operators, parentheticals, and (...) anaphoric mitigation devices, and consider some cognate non-assertoric constructions. We conclude by exploring the implications of our analysis for theorising about linguistic responsibility, assertion, and lying. (shrink)

The debate over the propriety of cognitive enhancement evokes both enthusiasm and worry. To gain further insight into the reasons that people may have for endorsing or eschewing pharmacological enhancement, we used empirical tools to explore public attitudes towards PE of twelve cognitive, affective, and social domains. Participants from Canada and the United States were recruited using Mechanical Turk and were randomly assigned to read one vignette that described an individual who uses a pill to enhance a single domain. After (...) reading the vignette, participants were asked how comfortable they were with the individual using the enhancement. People were significantly more comfortable when they read about enhancement of certain CAS domains than others. We found a modest negative correlation between comfort level and the degree to which the PE was perceived as changing core features of the person. We also found a modest correlation between comfort level and the degree to which the PE was perceived as improving success in life. Finally, using a sequential mixed method technique, we found that participants who felt uncomfortable about PE use overwhelmingly focused on a lack of need and, to a lesser degree, expressed concerns about safety; those who felt comfortable about PE use most frequently mentioned the safety of the pill and its ability to provide a positive outcome. The data provide novel insights into public enthusiasms and concerns over the use of PE. (shrink)

This paper sets out to unpack the pragmatic structure of refusal—its illocutionary nature, success conditions, and normative effects. I argue that our ordinary concept of refusal captures a whole family of illocutions, comprising acts such as rejecting, declining, and the like, which share the property of being ‘negative second-turn illocutions’. Only _proper refusals_ (i.e. negative replies to permission requests), I submit, require speaker authority. I construe the ‘refusal family’ as a subclass of the directives-commissives intersection. After defending my view against (...) a number of potential objections, I highlight how a theoretically grounded analysis of refusal is not only of intrinsic value, but may also have significant moral and legal implications. (shrink)