Anthropocentrism has been claimed to be the root of the global environmental crisis. Based on a multidisciplinary (e.g. environmental philosophy, animal ethics, anthropology, law) and multilingual (English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese) literature review, this article proposes a conceptual analysis of ‘anthropocentrism’ and reconstructs the often implicit argument that links anthropocentrism to the environmental crisis. The variety of usages of the concept of ‘anthropocentrism’ described in this article reveals many underlying disagreements under the apparent unanimity of the calls to reject anthropocentrism, (...) both regarding what exactly is the root of the problem, and the nature of the possible solutions. It highlights the limitations of the argument of anthropocentrism as the scapegoat of the environmental crisis and identifies two main challenges faced by attempts to go beyond anthropocentrism: an epistemological challenge regarding knowledge and the place of sciences, and a metaethical challenge related to values and cultural pluralism. Beyond the issue of an anthropocentric point of view, the core of the problem might be an intertwinement of views and assumptions that work together to undermine attempts to protect the environment from the greed of some humans, such as the human-nature dichotomy, capitalism, consumerism, industrialism, etc. Finally, this article suggests that making the nuances and the presuppositions that underlie various versions of the anti-anthropocentric rhetoric explicit is necessary to foster constructive dialogue among different anti-anthropocentrism proponents, as well as with their detractors. (shrink)

Lorsque nous avons affaire à des objets ou des états de choses complexes, il est difficile de réduire ces objets, ces états de choses, à la somme de leurs parties. Le holisme est la thèse selon laquelle un objet ou un état de choses ne se réduit pas à la somme de ses parties. On retrouve ce phénomène partout : en sciences (les états mentaux ne semblent pas se réduire à des activations de neurones même s’ ils surviennent sur eux), (...) en sociologie (l’ OM est plus que la somme des joueurs, c’ est pourquoi l’ OM existe même après un changement de joueur), en ontologie (le tout constitué par une moto est plus que l’ ensemble de ses parties, encore faut-il qu’ elles soient assemblées correctement) et en gastronomie (dans une fondue les parties et le tout sont indistinguables). -/- Dans cet article, je vais considérer une forme particulière de holisme, peut-être la plus mystérieuse puisqu’ il s’ agit d’ un holisme de valeurs. Soit la thèse suivante : la valeur d’ un tout n’ est pas égale à la somme des valeurs de ses parties. (shrink)

We know, since Descartes (1641), that exercises of sensory imagining (S-imagining) are not purely imagistic: they possess multiple aspects. This much is agreed upon among philosophers but, when the question of the intentionality of S-imaginings arises, agreement seems to unravel. -/- According to the Two Content View (TCV), S-imagining “has two kinds of content, qualitative content and assigned content” (Kung, 2010:632) – e.g., my image of an apple is about both (i) shapes and colors and (ii) about the fact that (...) it is an apple, rather than a perfect imitation thereof. Advocates of TCV claim that the imagistic content does represent something, but it is not enough to individuate the imagining of an A rather than a B (Kung, 2010; Langland-Hassan, 2015; Martin, 2002; Noordhof, 2002; Peacocke, 1985; Tooming, 2018; White, 1990). -/- Some, however, have expressed skepticism about TCV. As Sartre claims, “despite some prejudices […] when I produce in myself the image of Pierre, it is Pierre who is the object of my current consciousness.” (1940/2010:4) The intentional object of our S-imaginings is exhausted by a single content treated in a specific way (Currie & Ravenscroft, 2002; Goldman, 2006; Hutto, 2015; Mulligan, 1999; Soteriou, 2013; Stock, n.d.; Wiltsher, 2016,2019). -/- In the following, (1) I sketch one of the most efficient pleas for the TCV by Peter Langland-Hassan, (2) I give two reasons to doubt the decisiveness of his arguments, and (3) suggest that S-imagining can be captured by the attitude/content distinction. (shrink)

Dans cette entrée, après une introduction qui servira de cadre à notre discussion (section 1.), nous allons présenter et analyser des définitions du concept « Art ». Nous discuterons brièvement les définitions classiques les plus influentes puis nous nous concentrerons sur les principales définitions contemporaines. -/- Nous verrons pourquoi les définitions classiques sont aujourd’hui considérées comme insatisfaisantes (2.a.), et comment les philosophes, à partir de la seconde moitié du XXème siècle ont tenté de pallier leurs défauts. Dans les grandes lignes, (...) le problème principal soulevé à l’encontre des théories classiques est qu’elles cherchent toutes l’essence de l’art dans un trait caractéristique qui serait reconnaissable dans les œuvres elles-mêmes. Les théories contemporaines répondent à ce problème principalement de quatre façons, comme on le verra dans les sections 2.b à 2.d. Les théories sceptiques (2.b.) défendent qu’il est dès lors impossible de définir l’art – qu’on peut au mieux en donner certains caractères typiques, des airs de famille. Les théories relationnalistes (2.c.) défendent que ce qui fait qu’une chose est de l’art est à trouver en dehors de celle-ci, notamment dans les relations qu’elle entretient avec son contexte de création ou de présentation. Les théories néo-classiques (2.d.) continuent à chercher l’essence de l’art dans un trait caractéristique reconnaissable dans les œuvres elles-mêmes tout en prenant en compte les réactions sceptiques ou relationnalistes. Enfin, la théorie du ‘renvoi de la balle’ (2.e.) défend que l’on ne peut pas définir l’art mais seulement des sous-catégories comme la musique, la sculpture, les installations, les performances, etc. -/- Nous présenterons les avantages et les inconvénients principaux des théories contemporaines. Nous verrons qu’aucune n’est dénuée de problèmes, expliquant pourquoi il n’existe pas de consensus sur une définition de l’art aujourd’hui. Nous verrons également que – à l’exception d’un certain scepticisme qui jette, semble-t-il, trop vite l’éponge – chacune de ces théories amène, par son originalité, à une compréhension nouvelle et plus profonde de cette notion extrêmement complexe qu’est le concept « Art ». (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:136 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28" 1 JANUARY 199 ~ to the principle of acting for the common good are played down by Grant in her discussion of Locke. Nevertheless, Grant advances the important proposition with respect to the tradition of liberalism as a political doctrine that "Locke's political theory contains two tendencies that are not entirely harmonious." That is, there is an uneasy blend of radical (...) and conservative elements in Lockean liberalism, and "this ambivalent attitude is an expression of the central axis of conflict within liberal theory generally" (204). For those who seek to understand Locke's role as a progenitor of liberalism and the persistence of certain types of arguments and problems which retain their significance for thinkers who identify themselves with that political theory, therefore, John Locke's Liberalism provides an excellent starting point. RICHARD ASHCRAFT Universityof California, Los Angeles Fabio Todesco. Riforma della metafisica e sapere scientifico. Saggio suJ. H. Lambert (z 7281777 ). CoUana di Filosofia, vol. x5. Milan: Franco Angeli, 1987. Pp. 348- L 3o,ooo. Voltaire expressed his view of Wolffian metaphysics in a letter to Prince Frederick of Prussia: "Ce sont des 6clairs au milieu d'une nuit profonde; c'est tout ce qu'on peut esp~rer, je crois, de la m~taphysique. "~ Voltaire's attitude towards metaphysics was not shared by Condillac, who in his Essai sur l'origine des connoissances humaines (1746) distinguishes two kinds of metaphysics: one, ambitious and obscure of itself, pretends to discuss the essences of beings and the inscrutable causes of things; the other, more circumspect, confines itself to the analysis of knowledge, and so provides the only possible basis for a clarification of mind; it is "la science qui contribue le plus ~ rendre l'esprit lumineux, precis et 6tendu, et qui, par cons6"quent, doit le preparer ~ l'6tude de toutes les autres." It started with Locke, and is to be treated with the same exactitude as geometry in order to give a clear and invariable meaning to the words used, and a simple and easy order to the propositions." Maupertuis, who in 1746 became the President of the newly re-founded Berlin Acad~mie Royale des Sciences, hoped for the application of mathematics to metaphysics; nevertheless, he didn't expect the same degree of certitude from the latter as from the former. 3 In 1761 the Berlin Academy proposed a prize question as to whether metaphysics were capable of the same degree of evidence as mathematics. Lambert answered the question by claiming that geometrical demonstrations might be applied to metaphysics. 4 Four years afterwards (January 1765) Lambert was enrolled as a merei Letter of 1 September 1736, in Voltaire'sCorrespondence,ed. Theodore Besterman (Geneva: Librairie E. Droz, 1954), 5: 232. " Oeuw-esPhilosophiquesde Condillac,ed. Georges Le Roy (Paris: P.U.F., 19~7), 1:3. DesDevoirsde l'Acadg, micien, in Histoirede l'AcademieRoyaledesSciencesetBelles-Lettres,~5 vols. (Berlin, 1746-71), 1 (1746): 142-43. 4 "Llber die Methode, die Metaphysik, Theologie und Moral richtiger zu beweisen.... "ed. K. Bopp, Kantstud,en, suppl. 4~ (1918). BOOK REVIEWS a37 ber of the Berlin Academy; in the speech he delivered on that occasion he maintained that the simple concepts first formulated by Locke were the basis of human knowledge. From these simple concepts were drawn axiomata and postulata, the starting points of demonstrations that were necessarily and strictly to follow "l'ordre et le rigueur g~ometrique. ''~ In his own research, Lambert's point of departure was the philosophy of Christian Wolff, who had applied geometrical method to philosophy and provided demonstrations of its propositions, and definitions of all its constituent terms. The result Lambert obtained is very different from that of Wolff's metaphysics, which was constructed by deduction from the most general concept of ens, elaborated through a series of classifications per genera et species. Lambert abandoned this Wolffian system of classification in order to follow the anatomical method introduced by Locke, and by which the fundamental constituent elements of thought might be reached. The metaphysics of Lambert is a reversal of that of Wolff: it is built up from simple ideas derived immediately from sense perception: these simple ideas, being indivisible, are... (shrink)

Fondée en 1950 par Eugénie Droz, la collection des Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance a réuni, en soixante-cinq ans, plus de 550 titres. Elle s'est imposée comme la collection la plus importante au monde de sources et d'études sur l'Humanisme (Politien, Ficin, Erasme, Budé...), la Réforme francophone (Lefèvre d'Etaples, Calvin, Farel, Bèze...), la Renaissance (littéraire et artistique, Jérôme Bosch ou Rabelais, Ronsard ou le Primatice...), mais aussi la médecine, les sciences, la philosophie, l'histoire du livre et toutes les formes de (...) savoir et d'activité humaine d'un long XVIe siècle, des environs de 1450 jusqu'à la mort du roi Henri IV, seuil de l'âge classique. Les Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance sont le navire-amiral des éditions Droz. (shrink)

How do modal expressions determine which possibilities they range over? According to the Modal Anchor Hypothesis (Kratzer in _The language-cognition interface: Actes du 19_ _e_ _congrès international des linguistes_, Libraire Droz, Genève, 179–199, 2013 ), modal expressions determine their domain of quantification from particulars (events, situations, or individuals). This paper presents novel evidence for this hypothesis, focusing on a class of Spanish relative clauses that host verbs inflected in the subjunctive. Subjunctive in Romance is standardly taken to be licensed (...) only in a subset of intensional contexts. However, in our relative clauses, subjunctive is exceptionally licensed in extensional contexts. At the same time, the interpretation of these relative clauses still involves modality, a type of modality that targets the goals of the agent of the main event. We argue that the pattern displayed by these relative clauses follows straightforwardly if subjunctive is associated with a modal operator that, like modal indefinites (Alonso-Ovalle and Menéndez-Benito in _Journal of Semantics_ 35(1):1–41, 2017 ), can project its domain from a volitional event. Overall, our proposal supports the event-based analysis of mood (Kratzer in Evidential mood in attitude and speech reports. Talk delivered at the 1st Syncart Workshop, Siena, July 13, 2016 ; Portner and Rubinstein in _Natural Language Semantics_ 28:343–393, 2020 ) and extends its application beyond attitudinal and modal complements. (shrink)

Introductory essay, translation, updating and bibliography.

I was recently asked to report on editorial trends in the Hastings Center Report, past and future. What I reported is that HCR has been going in two seemingly contrasting directions. One has to do with moral decision‐making in clinical ethics—the core theme in bioethics for fifty years, but still developing. A second editorial trend is treatment of larger social and political issues that bear on health, such as public health interventions and access to health care. I could also have (...) noted a continuing stream of pieces on emerging technologies, from whole‐genome screening for newborns to artificial intelligence in clinical diagnoses to the so‐called de‐extinction of extinct animals and plants through various genetic and reproductive tricks. This January‐February 2019 issue of HCR reflects all these trends. (shrink)

The financial Crunch of 2008 was easily explained by both the left and right–too easily. Each insisted that events thoroughly confirmed its own long-held views and utterly refuted those of the opposed camp. This essay argues that there are indeed new lessons to be drawn from the Crunch, lessons that involve balancing the bounty of the Invisible Hand against perils of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Liberal moral imperatives are traced to variables of Personal Choice and External Cost that are typically in (...) tension with each other and thus generate needs for institutional reconstructions that change according to time and circumstance. Personal bankruptcy protection, limited liability corporations, and intellectual property are cited as examples. It is argued that the Crunch occurred because of failure adequately to balance these variables. Three paradoxes came to a head in 2008: Paradox of Efficient Markets; Paradox of Reduced Risk; Paradox of Hard-won Knowledge. The essay concludes with suggestions concerning specific lessons to be drawn from the Crunch and a corresponding list of lessons not to be drawn. (shrink)

O estudo em questão tem por objetivo analisar a Lei 9099/95, que instituiu os Juizados Especiais Cíveis na Justiça Estadual, no que diz respeito aos seus limites e potencialidades discutidos a partir da principiologia proposta pela citada Lei em um viés jurídico-filosófico. Observar-se-á para tanto a Teoria do Discurso enquanto arcabouço procedimental capaz de potencializar a observância na prática de uma justiça mais célere, simples, informal, econômica e baseada na oralidade. Para tanto aplicar-se-á a interpretação do pensamento de Jürgen Habermas (...) e de Robert Alexy em conjunto a autores tradicionais do Direito com o objetivo de se avaliar se o pensamento dogmático se encontra superado ou ainda se apresenta como um entrave para que os princípios, que a Lei atribui a condição de Critérios Orientadores dos Juizados Especial Cíveis, sejam observados na realidade fática. (shrink)

Il presente studio si pone in ideale continuità con l’opera di Marcello Gigante Nomos Basileus, analisi fondamentale della nascita e delle interrelazioni tra diritto naturale, diritto divino e diritto positivo nel mondo greco, prendendo le mosse proprio dal punto in cui questi aveva interrotto la sua indagine, ossia sulle concezioni platoniche del nomos e le sue connessioni con il divino, l’anima e l’educazione. In Platone sono rintracciate le premesse teoretiche della concezione, poi diffusa in età ellenistica, imperiale e tardo-antica, e (...) solitamente attribuita agli stoici, del sovrano come nomos empsychos legge incarnata, fonte del diritto positivo in quanto è legge esso stesso. In Platone esiste uno stretto rapporto tra diritto naturale, diritto divino e diritto positivo: che il nomos empsychos sia espressione della legge di natura risulta dal principio platonico secondo cui natura è per l’uomo l’anima e principalmente la dimensione intellegibile e divina che è in essa. I governanti degni promulgano leggi positive che scaturiscono dalla loro anima divina: così può essere garantito il fondamento divino e naturale delle leggi positive. -/- . (shrink)

John E. Smith; XI—Radical Empiricism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 65, Issue 1, 1 June 1965, Pages 205–218, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotel.