Lo storico della filosofia e filosofo francese Étienne Gilson (1884-1978) ha notoriamente offerto una lettura innovativa di importanti figure del pensiero medievale, da Tommaso d’Aquino a Duns Scoto e Bonaventura, includendo in questa lista anche Agostino di Ippona. L’originalità della lettura offerta da Gilson si esprime per lo meno in due modi. In primo luogo, Gilson ha argomentato a sostegno dell’effettiva caratura filosofica, e non semplicemente teologica, del pensiero di quei pensatori. Contro un pesante pregiudizio che all’epoca in cui egli (...) iniziava le sue ricerche, e specialmente nella sua Francia, gravava nei confronti della cultura medioevale – di non aver espresso alcuna filosofia ma solo una teologia – egli acquisì «il merito di aver non solo iniziato genialmente la riscoperta della filosofia medievale, ma di aver decisamente contribuito a riportarne la storia ai livelli della scientificità e della dignità accademica». In secondo luogo, Gilson ha sostenuto che la filosofia in questione si caratterizza di uno «spirito cristiano» che, come aveva caratterizzato l’epoca medievale sotto ogni altro aspetto, ne aveva informato il pensiero filosofico, dando vita a una vera e propria «filosofia cristiana». Ma se questo significa che, per il filosofo francese, si dava un elemento di caratterizzazione unitaria del pensiero medievale, va anche rilevato che, per lo stesso autore, questo pensiero andava indagato nella sua notevole varietà. Con competenza e lettura fedele dei testi, Gilson valorizzò le differenze tra le filosofie dei vari autori presi in considerazione. In questo articolo, intendo mostrare che queste due caratteristiche dell’interpretazione gilsoniana del pensiero medievale si applicano entrambe all’interpretazione che il filosofo francese offrì del pensiero di Dante Alighieri. In primo luogo, Gilson ha riconosciuto anche a Dante, come al pensiero medievale tutto, una caratura specificamente filosofica. In secondo luogo, della filosofia del sommo poeta (che Gilson riteneva anch’essa ‘cristiana’) ha evidenziato la peculiarità, sganciandola dalle classificazioni che la volevano ridurre a qualcuna delle correnti filosofiche del Duecento. Il fine che mi propongo è quello di mostrare (nella prima sezione) in che cosa consista questa peculiarità, per poi procedere (nelle successive tre sezioni) a rilevare che essa conduce Gilson a una coerente interpretazione di Dante filosofo secondo tre direttrici: quella etica, quella politica e quella filosofico-storica. (shrink)

Recordando a Bachelard a medio siglo de su muerte (2011) -- Filosofia de la relatividad (2011) -- La proliferación de los conceptos de especie en la biología evolucionista (2010).

This collection addresses two different audiences: 1) historians and philosophers of the life sciences reflecting on collaborations across disciplines, especially as regards defining and addressing Grand Challenges; 2) researchers and other stakeholders involved in cross-disciplinary collaborations aimed at tackling Grand Challenges in the life and medical sciences. The essays collected here offer ideas and resources both for the study and for the practice of goal-driven cross-disciplinary research in the life and medical sciences. We organise this introduction in three sections. The (...) first section provides some background and context. The second motivates our take on this topic and then outlines the central ideas of each paper. The third section highlights the specificity and significance of this approach by considering: a) how this collection departs from existing literature on inter- and trans-disciplinarity, b) what is characteristic about this approach, and c) what role this suggests for the history and philosophy of the life sciences in addressing Grand Challenges. (shrink)

The idea of personalised medicine (PM) has gathered momentum recently, attracting funding and generating hopes as well as scepticism. As PM gives rise to differing interpretations, there have been several attempts to clarify the concept. In an influential paper published in this journal, Schleidgen and colleagues have proposed a precise and narrow definition of PM on the basis of a systematic literature review. Given that their conclusion is at odds with those of other recent attempts to understand PM, we consider (...) whether their systematic review gives them an edge over competing interpretations. We have found some methodological weaknesses and questionable assumptions in Schleidgen and colleagues’ attempt to provide a more specific definition of PM. Our perplexities concern the lack of criteria for assessing the epistemic strength of the definitions that they consider, as well as the logical principles used to extract a more precise definition, the narrowness of the pool from which they have drawn their empirical data, and finally their overlooking the fact that definitions depend on the context of use. We are also worried that their ethical assumption that only patients’ interests are legitimate is too simplistic and drives all other stakeholders’ interests—including those that are justifiable—underground, thus compromising any hope of a transparent and fair negotiation among a plurality of actors and interests. As an alternative to the shortcomings of attempting a semantic disciplining of the concept we propose a pragmatic approach. Rather than considering PM to be a scientific concept in need of precise demarcation, we look at it as an open and negotiable concept used in a variety of contexts including at the level of orienting research goals and policy objectives. We believe that since PM is still more an ideal than an achieved reality, a plurality of visions is to be expected and we need to pay attention to the people, reasons and interests behind these alternative conceptions. In other words, the logic and politics of PM cannot be disentangled and disagreements need to be tackled addressing the normative and strategic conflicts behind them. (shrink)

According to Thomas Reid, the development of natural sciences following the model of Newton's Principia and Optics would provide further evidence for the belief in a provident God. This project was still supported by his student, Dugald Stewart, in the early nineteenth century. John Fearn , an early critic of the Scottish common sense school, thought that the rise of ‘infidelity’ in the wake of scientific progress had shown that the apologetic project of Reid and Stewart had failed. In reaction (...) to Reid and Stewart, he proposed an idealist philosophy that would dispense with the existence of matter, and would thus cut at the root what he thought was the main source of modern atheism. In this paper, I consider Fearn's critique of Reid and Stewart in his main works: First Lines of the Human Mind and Manual of the Physiology of Mind . I also consider Fearn's arguments against Hume and in favour of a renewed apologetics in An Essay on the Philosophy of Faith and the Economy of Revelatio.. (shrink)

Il testo consiste nella trascrizione rimaneggiata di un dialogo che il gruppo di ricerca indipendente “Inoperoso” ha intrattenuto con Roberto Esposito in data 11 maggio 2023. Il tema della discussione è consistito nella messa in questione di una possibile attualità critica della prospettiva ontologico-politica che lo stesso Esposito ha definito dapprima “pensiero impolitico” e poi, in testi più recenti, “pensiero destituente”. Nel rivendicare una tale attualità, i membri di “Inoperoso” si sono confrontati con il successivo sviluppo del pensiero di (...) Esposito, e in particolare con le critiche alle contraddizioni della prospettiva destituente da lui avanzate nella sua recente trilogia dedicata alla proposta del “paradigma istituente”. L’intento ultimo del dialogo era sviluppare una pratica filosofica incentrata non su questioni interne ad una considerazione ristretta di un singolo autore o di tema specifico, bensì rivolta ad esercizio collettivo di riflessione sulle grandi questioni e sulle tematiche che toccano ogni essere umano, guardando da un lato alle forme nelle quali l’attuale congiuntura istituzionale tende ad ostacolare un simile esercizio, e dall’altro alle opportunità di trasformazione che essa può concretamente offrire. (shrink)

Both a significant body of literature and the case study presented here show that digital knowledge repositories struggle to attract the needed level of data and knowledge contribution that they need to be successful. This happens also to high profile and prestigious initiatives. The paper argues that the reluctance of researchers to contribute can only be understood in light of the highly competitive context in which research careers need to be built nowadays and how this affects researchers’ quality of life. (...) Competition and managerialism limit the discretion of researchers in sharing their results and in donating their working time. A growing corpus of research shows that academic researchers are increasingly overworked and highly stressed. This corroborates the point that the room for undertaking additional tasks with future and uncertain benefits is very limited. The paper thus recommends that promoters of digital knowledge repositories focus on the needs of the researchers who are expected to contribute their knowledge. In order to treat them fairly and to ensure the success of the repositories, knowledge sharing needs to be rewarded so as to improve the working conditions of contributors. In order to help implementing this researcher-centred approach, the paper proposes the idea of expediential trust: rewards for contributing should be such that rational, self-interested researchers would freely decide to contribute their knowledge and effort trusting that this would make them better off. (shrink)

The paper discusses the possibility that the benefits of pharmacogenomics will not be distributed equally and will create orphan populations. I argue that since these inequalities are not substantially different from those produced by ‘traditional’ drugs and are not generated with the intention to discriminate, their production needs not be unethical. Still, the final result is going against deep-seated moral feelings and intuitions, as well as broadly accepted principles of just distribution of health outcomes and healthcare. I thus propose two (...) provisos that would prevent the most offensive outcomes and moderate the scope of the produced inequalities. The first proviso rejects pharmacogenomics innovations that worsen existing group inequalities and aggravate the disadvantage of communities with a history of discrimination. The second proviso requires that there is a strategy in place to even out as much as possible the distribution of benefits in the future and that a system of compensations is in place for pharmacogenomic orphans. Given that only one moral problem generated by pharmacogenomics has been tackled, the list of provisos might be expanded when other issues are considered. (shrink)

The paper uses two historical examples, public health (1840-1880) and town planning (1945-1975) in Britain, to analyse the challenges faced by goal-driven research, an increasingly important trend in science policy, as exemplified by the prominence of calls for addressing Grand Challenges. Two key points are argued. (1) Given that the aim of research addressing social or global problems is to contribute to improving things, this research should include all the steps necessary to bring science and technology to fruition. This need (...) is captured by the idea of practical integration, which brings this type of research under the umbrella of collective practical reason rather than under the aegis of science. Achieving practical integration is difficult for many reasons: the complexity of social needs, the plurality of values at stake, the limitation of our knowledge, the elusive nature of the skills needed to deal with uncertainty, incomplete information and asymmetries of power. Nevertheless, drawing from the lessons of the case studies, it is argued that (2) practical integration needs a proper balance between values, institutions and knowledge: i.e. a combination of mutual support and mutual limitation. Pursuing such a balance provides a flexible strategy for approximating practical integration. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 37-39.

In spite of extensive criticisms, war metaphors are still widespread in medical discourse. In the domain of public health analogies between war and infectious diseases are rooted in the similar impacts they can have on political institutions and communities. This similarity has been emphasized by the recent trend of addressing infectious disease from the point of view of national security. Nevertheless, it is here argued that the analogy cannot be used to model normative principles for treating carriers of contagious diseases (...) after the principles of ius in bello . Yet, the analogy may provide some useful practical and theoretical insights in tackling the growing problem of limiting the spread of drug-resistant pathogens: an issue that generates increasing worries and raises difficult ethical and political questions of rights, responsibilities and obligations. It is suggested that if anti-microbials and antibiotics are seen as strategic information, their misuse can be usefully compared to careless talk in times of war. (shrink)

A critical survey of the main philosophical theories about events and event talk, organized in three main sections: (i) Events and Other Categories (Events vs. Objects; Events vs. Facts; Events vs. Properties; Events vs. Times); (ii) Types of Events (Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, and States; Static and Dynamic Events; Actions and Bodily Movements; Mental and Physical Events; Negative Events); (iii) Existence, Identity, and Indeterminacy.

The paper points out three serious problems in Ruud ter Meulen’s view of solidarity and of its role in healthcare ethics. First, it is not clear whether and to what extent ter Meulen expects normative concepts to be rooted in existing social practices: his criticism of liberal theories of justice seems to imply a different view on this issue than his implicit assumption that normative concepts are independent from social and historical trends. Second, it is not clear at which level (...) his notion of solidarity is meant to be applied: does it provide principles for individuals or for institutions? Nor is it clear at what level of generality it should work: is it meant for healthcare institutions or for states, for citizens or for healthcare practitioners? Third, it is not at all clear how the communitarian and the universalist aspirations in his conception of solidarity can be reconciled. In light of such difficulties it is argued that within philosophical discourse solidarity can be a useful notion only if it can be clearly distinguished from existing and commonly used ethical concepts. Three examples of such narrow and specific uses of solidarity are presented. Finally, a sceptical view of confining the work of applied philosophers to articulating normative concepts is put forward and an alternative view of blending empirical and philosophical analysis is proposed. This vision of field philosophy requires serious attention and careful understanding of the circumstances and constraints within which normative recommendations operate. It is suggested that such a modest and empirically grounded understanding of normative work is a better way of honouring the belief that philosophy is rooted in social institutions and in complex webs of relations. (shrink)

Starting from the semantic difference between the Arabic terms samāḥa or tasāmuḥ, and the Latin tolerantia, this essay proposes some observations on the Islamic notion of tolerance according to some contemporary Arabic language texts of Islamic inspiration. This literature invariably emphasises the importance of tolerance in the context of the Islamic religion and thought; and, notwithstanding some evident differences among the authors, relating to schools and to varying degrees of openness to Western thought, the discourse remains anchored in the foundational (...) literature, especially the Sunnah of the Prophet. (shrink)

kind of joke to ask what is the case if the antecedent is false—“And where are the biscuits if I don’t want any?”, “And what’s on PBS if I’m not interested?”, “And who shot Kennedy if that’s not what I’m asking?”. With normal indicative conditionals like.

Roberto Esposito is one of the most prolific and important exponents of contemporary Italian political theory.

This unique textbook states and proves all the major theorems of many-valued propositional logic and provides the reader with the most recent developments and trends, including applications to adaptive error-correcting binary search. The book is suitable for self-study, making the basic tools of many-valued logic accessible to students and scientists with a basic mathematical knowledge who are interested in the mathematical treatment of uncertain information. Stressing the interplay between algebra and logic, the book contains material never before published, such as (...) a simple proof of the completeness theorem and of the equivalence between Chang's MV algebras and Abelian lattice-ordered groups with unit - a necessary prerequisite for the incorporation of a genuine addition operation into fuzzy logic. Readers interested in fuzzy control are provided with a rich deductive system in which one can define fuzzy partitions, just as Boolean partitions can be defined and computed in classical logic. Detailed bibliographic remarks at the end of each chapter and an extensive bibliography lead the reader on to further specialised topics. (shrink)

Personalism is one of the philosophical perspectives which hold that the reality in person and the human person has the highest intrinsic value. This paper makes reference to Louis Janssens' eight criteria in adequate consideration of the human person but further argues that there is need to consider people as situated agents especially within gender relational perspectives. The paper identifies gender as an important social construction that shapes the consideration of the human persons within socio-spatial spheres. The main crux of (...) the paper is that there is a gender context of personalism and this has profound implications for bioethical agendas. Gender is part of the human condition, especially when we philosophically or sociologically engage the notion of equity and equality within the social system, because social realities in the relational perspective are not impartial, impersonal and equal. Gender does not determine morality but it plays a role in morality and expectations from moral agents. Women have been categorised as a sociological group because their integrity, freedom/autonomy and dignity (which are basic concerns of bioethics) are capable of being threatened. A gender perspective provides important incentives for moral theory which searches for possible conceptual imbalances or blind spots in ethical reflections. The paper refers to Sen's faces of gender inequality and expands on the notion that natality inequality is one of the fundamental levels of gender inequality, which in turn is the primary starting agenda in bioethics. The paper avers that the recognition of the fundamental importance of gender to the organization of social reality and the development of personal identities have important practical implications for bioethics. (shrink)

In this article Roberto Balzani, the mayor of Forlì, remembers Roberto Ruffilli, 25 years after his murder. The remembrance reconstructs the steps of his academic career and of his political commitment. Ruffilli graduated at the Catholic University of Milan; his researches in contemporary history placed him in an original position if compared with the Italian studies of the time. The constant attention towards the history of administration and the transformations of the state is the basis on which Ruffilli (...) built his proposals concerning the reform of the insitutional and political system. Balzani concludes the article by affirming that the problems of today aren't any different, that is why Ruffilli's proposals still demonstrate their modernity. (shrink)

According to a leading view, emotions such as admiration, contempt, pride, and shame are important vehicles of agential development. Through admiration and contempt, we establish models and countermodels against which to shape our character; through pride and shame, we get a sense of how we measure up to them. Critics of this view object that these emotions always deliver uncompromising evaluations: admiration casts people in a completely positive light, while contempt casts aspersion on them. Therefore, insofar as they lack the (...) capacity for nuance, these emotions are systematically unfitting and misleading. This paper discusses this objection as originally formulated by John Doris as well as Macalester Bell’s response. Drawing from research on emotional intentionality, it will be argued that Doris’ and Bell’s accounts are respectively misguided criticisms and inadequate defences of these emotions. Their mistake lies in an invalid transition from the claim that these emotions are intentionally directed towards persons to the claim that they deliver global evaluations of those towards whom they are directed. By rejecting this inference, it will be shown that these emotions can deliver nuanced and fitting evaluations in a way Doris’ objection overlooks and Bell’s response precludes us from articulating. (shrink)

This book by Roberto Esposito - a leading Italian political philosopher - is a highly original exploration of the relationship between human bodies and societies. The original function of law, even before it was codified, was to preserve peaceful cohabitation between people who were exposed to the risk of destructive conflict. Just as the human body's immune system protects the organism from deadly incursions by viruses and other threats, law also ensures the survival of the community in a life-threatening (...) situation. It protects and prolongs life. But the function of law as a form of immunization points to a more disturbing consideration. Like the individual body, the collective body can be immunized from the perceived danger only by allowing a little of what threatens it to enter its protective boundaries. This means that in order to escape the clutches of death, life is forced to incorporate within itself the lethal principle. Starting from this reflection on the nature of immunization, Esposito offers a wide-ranging analysis of contemporary biopolitics. Never more than at present has the demand for immunization come to characterize all aspects of our existence. The more we feel at risk of being infiltrated and infected by foreign elements, the more the life of the individual and society closes off within its protective boundaries, forcing us to choose between a self-destructive outcome and a more radical alternative based on a new conception of community. (shrink)

This paper discusses three relevant logics that obey Component Homogeneity - a principle that Goddard and Routley introduce in their project of a logic of significance. The paper establishes two main results. First, it establishes a general characterization result for two families of logic that obey Component Homogeneity - that is, we provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for their consequence relations. From this, we derive characterization results for S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fde. Second, the paper establishes complete sequent calculi (...) for S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fde. Among the other accomplishments of the paper, we generalize the semantics from Bochvar, Hallden, Deutsch and Daniels, we provide a general recipe to define containment logics, we explore the single-premise/single-conclusion fragment of S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fdeand the connections between crossS*fde and the logic Eq of equality by Epstein. Also, we present S*fde as a relevant logic of meaninglessness that follows the main philosophical tenets of Goddard and Routley, and we briefly examine three further systems that are closely related to our main logics. Finally, we discuss Routley's criticism to containment logic in light of our results, and overview some open issues. (shrink)

As the worlds of economics, politics, culture, and communications face a growing wave of globalization that will likely continue, ethical challenges for journalists have also gone global. I propose a clear division between ethics codes for media owners, the public, and professional journalists and present a set of considerations and specific rules applicable only to the last group. In this article I advocate a universal code of journalistic ethics but point out problems and warn against dangers that have made the (...) application of such codes difficult in the past. A universal code should consider the voluntary nature of such an endeavor, the cultural and economic differences in various journalistic traditions, and the problem of producing solutions acceptable to all involved. (shrink)

A discussion with Roberto Andorno about global bioethics and biolaw, the Coronavirus pandemic, and its impact on human dignity and rights. Can we foresee the emerging new profile of global bioethics and biolaw in the post-Coronavirus era? How significant are they going to be in the future, after the enormous pressure that the Coronavirus pandemic has exercised on key political, legal, and ethical values? Must the voice of bioethicists -compared to the ‘hard’ scientific data- be louder in the future (...) concerning decisions about emergency social and medical measures? Is there a hope that public empowerment will support robust, global public engagement and meaningful deliberation? How much does Roberto Andorno’s view on human dignity reveal a supposed commitment to moral realism? The massive deaths of elderly people living in hospices of Sweden, Spain, and Italy, based on an implicit ‘fair innings’ view, has recently posed certain questions on the moral unacceptability of such practices. The same questions arise in the case of the legalization of euthanasia grounded on the implicit acceptance of the view that life is not worth living under certain circumstances. Is it possible that the human rights bodies worldwide will acquire executive power, and how could this become possible? How influential the ‘precautionary principle’ can become regarding clinical and research ethics in the future? How urgent is the importance of the introduction of bioethical education in the curricula of ‘hard’ empirical studies? Roberto Andorno discusses with us all these controversial and under heated public debate issues, giving sometimes provocative answers. (shrink)