In this paper, the author criticises some basic assumptions of Ferrara's book, which deal with: a) the concept of the so-called 'fact of pluralism'; b) the idea of linguistical turn; c) some of Ferrara's episodical but significant remarks on strategic rationality; d) the role of experts in sciences.

The aim of this paper is to focus on the role of fairness within an apparently secondary passage of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, in order to show that it is necessary to the impartial construction of perfect procedural justice.

: In this paper I offer some criticisms of Jonathan Dancy’s moral particularism. In Dancy’s version moral particularism states that there are neither general nor universal moral principles, that moral action is not the application of principles to particular cases, that moral reasoning has no motivational force because it deduces what must be done by moral principles, and that the agent who acts morally is not a person who has moral principles. However, Dancy’s proposal fails to explain the regularity of (...) moral behavior and the function of stability that moral agents and moral psychology play within social cooperation, nor is it able to explain the possibility of moral progress. Keywords: Jonathan Dancy; Moral Progress; Moral Psychology; Principles; Cooperation La mente morale particolarista Riassunto: In questo articolo espongo alcune critiche al particolarismo morale di Jonathan Dancy. Nella versione di Dancy il particolarismo morale afferma che non ci sono né principi morali generali né universali, che l’azione morale non è l’applicazione di principi a casi particolari, che il ragionamento morale non ha forza motivazionale perché deduce ciò che deve essere fatto dai principi morali, e che l’agente che agisce moralmente non è una persona che ha principi morali. Tuttavia, la proposta di Dancy non riesce a spiegare la regolarità del comportamento morale e la funzione di stabilità che gli agenti morali e la psicologia morale svolgono all’interno della cooperazione sociale, né è in grado di spiegare la possibilità del progresso morale. Parole chiave: Jonathan Dancy; Progresso morale; Psicologia morale; Principi; Cooperazione. (shrink)

This paper deals with the major concepts of Scanlon’s moral contractualism. It is possible to describe moral contractualism as the ability to identify priorities and moral reasons in deliberative action, that no one could reasonably reject. These capabilities require us to take into account the interests of others in our moral judgments. The result is that Scanlon overthrow the philosophy of Hobbes: morality is not originated from politics; on the contrary, politics is a function of morality. His answer to the (...) dilemma of Prichard is particularly persuasive, though the proof of the falsity of the skeptical position can only be dialectic and persuasive is its intellectualistic position on relations between reasons and desires, too. (shrink)

Expressionism, holism, and deflationism are central concepts in Blackburn quasi-realistic metaethics. The paper deals with these in order to evaluate the general tenability of Blackburn’s version of non-cognitivism.

The article focuses on the relations between passions and cognition in Hume’s philosophy. Although it is widely recognised that Hume attributed a central role to emotions in our natural structure, it is not frequently understood that in Hume’s conceptual framework passions themselves have a gnoseological content. In this paper some arguments are provided in order to show that this is the case.

The paper explores various conceptual formats that are designed to help us organize our thoughts concerning what we do, expecially personal identity, intertemporal preferences, and maximization. I discuss some suggestions from Parfit on personal identity and from Hare on interpersonal preference.

In this article I explore some consequences of the relations between technique, capitalism and radical liberation ideologies. My thesis is that the latter are going to rise to the extent that wage labor will become a scarce commodity. Through total automation, however, what may occur will not be the end of the reign of scarcity, but a new oppressive order.

The paper is devoted to a discussion of Rorty’s Truth and Progress. Some Rorty’s core ideas are discussed: ethnocentrism, pragmatism, liberalism, cultural differences, darwinism, feminism. The conclusion is that his idea of moral judgment as expression of our ethnocentrism does not allow a rational defence of liberal societies.

After recalling the Lockean doctrine of tacit consent and Hume’s criticisms to contractualistic theories, I propose a method for the selection of rulers.

The paper deals with the received view, shared by many social scientists, of expected utility theory as a descriptive and prescriptive vision both of right action and of right procedure of thought. It states that in the classical formulation of the theory there are scarce hints for such a monistic interpretation, which does not pay justice to the pluralistic reality of the reason for action.

In this paper I offer some observations on the liberalism of Ackerman andI interpret it as a mixed method of solution of the problems of rivalness of goods by means of a set of dialogical norms.

Hobbesian spaces? In this article I explore some issues related to cyberwar and its implications for the extension of the Hobbesian paradigm of the state of nature to international relations with particular reference to cyberspace. My conclusion is that there are many reasons to believe that this explanatory paradigm should also apply in this area.

In this article I discuss some aspects of prima facie statements and compare them with some deductive properties of moral rules. The conclusion I draw is in the sense of a re-evaluation of some aspects of moral intuitionism, which seems essential to the concepts of moral imagination and moral education.

The article is a critical note of A. Lambertino's work, Valore e piacere. It focuses particularly on the chapters dedicated to Kant, Nietzsche, Freud and on the last chapter, which clearly expresses the author's point of view. The conclusion is that the ethical position presented by Lambertino corresponds to a moderate ethical intellectualism.

This paper offers a new interpretation of Bernard Williams’s infamous claim that the demands of morality violate our integrity. It begins by showing how Williams’s critique targets an underexplored demand for genericity in moral philosophy. It then argues that while this demand is currently a foundational methodological commitment in moral theorizing, it cannot always be met without distorting the very values that theorizing intends to accommodate. Through careful consideration of the importance of practical experience for appreciating the value of ground (...) projects like human relationships, the paper reinterprets the integrity objection as a radical pushback against the way moral philosophy, by and large, represents the phenomenology of personal valuing. This conclusion offers two contributions. First, it reimagines a significant and yet poorly understood implication of Williams’s argument. Second, it raises a new challenge in an old debate: does moral philosophy fairly represent the values it purports to be about? (shrink)

I argue that the dominant conception of normative reasons in moral philosophy works to exclude certain modes of valuing from fair representation in moral deliberation and justification. I then argue that while reasons are taken to be the center and focus of practical thought, there are a wide and familiar range of activities in everyday life whose full appreciation escapes meaningful formulation in terms of reasons. As a result, the significance of these activities is systematically discounted or ignored by the (...) dominant assumptions about what counts as a reason in the methodology of moral philosophy. I conclude by putting forward my own positive account of practical thinking called loving attention, which contributes to a richer understanding of the elements of practical thought in some familiar cases of valuing, moral concept acquisition, imagination, and attention. (shrink)

The principle of belief persistence, or conservativity principle, states that ’\Nhen changing beliefs in response to new evidence, you should continue to believe as many of the old beliefs as possible' (Harman, 1986, p. 46). In particular, this means that if an individual gets new information, she has to accommodate it in her new belief set (the set of propositions she believes), and, if the new information is not inconsistent with the old belief set, then (1) the individual has to (...) maintain all the beliefs she previously had and (2) the change should be minimal in the sense that every proposition in the new belief set must be deducible from the union of the old belief set and the new information (see, e.g., Gardenfors, 1988; Stalnaker, 1984). We focus on this minimal notion of belief persistence and characterize it both semantically and syntactically. A ’possible world' semantic formalization of the principle easily comes to mind. The set of all the propositions that the individual believes corresponds to the set of states of the world that she considers possible and is a subset of the set of states that are not ruled out by the individual's information (or knowledge). It is required that, if the individual considers a state possible and her new information does not exclude this state, then she continue to consider it possible. Furthermore, if the individual regards a particular state as impossible, then she should continue to regard it as impossible unless her new information excludes all the states that she previously regarded as possible. This is closely related to the.. (shrink)

La pedagogia utilizza sempre più spesso il termine formazione. Ciò richiede però un atteggiamento critico capace di riconoscere le diverse valenze del termine, i diversi contesti d'uso, il ricco e problematico spessore teoretico. Occorre che la riflessione pedagogica coniughi il pensare alla formazione con un pensare la formazione capace di accogliere le suggestioni e i contributi provenienti da diversi autori e discipline. In questa prospettiva si colloca l'approfondimento della realtà della coscienza svolto da Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), filosofo e teologo canadese, (...) gesuita. Egli ha elaborato, nel corso degli anni, un pensiero molto articolato sulla vita coscienziale, in cui appare chiaro il legame con la dimensione della formazione. La coscienza è intrinsecamente segnata da un processo formativo, così come la formazione non si realizza pienamente se non attraverso una appropriazione operata dal soggetto del proprio dinamismo coscienziale. Inoltre l'approfondimento del pensiero coscienziale svela in Lonergan la presenza di elementi che concorrono a costituire una vera e propria 'filosofia' della formazione. La formazione risulta essere, nella sua peculiarità, nella sua essenza, una risignificazione costitutiva del soggetto. (shrink)

The literature suggests that the moral sense is based on innate abilities. In fact, it has been shown that children show the capacity for moral discernment, emotions and prosocial motivations from an early age. However, the moral sense is a complex construct of an evolutionary and social nature that evolves under the influence of interpersonal relationships. The emergence and development of moral sense is a challenge that has prompted many research studies with the aim of achieving a clear comprehension of (...) moral development. However, success has been scarce, and studies relevant to this subject are limited. Thus, a systematic review of studies relevant to this topic was conducted to clearly establish how moral sense emerges and develops. An Ovid search was conducted to retrieve relevant items for this systematic review. The databases that were electronically visited are Cross-reference, Google Scholar and PubMed. Strict inclusion and exclusion criteria were imposed on the retrieved items to retain only relevant resources. Twenty-six studies were found valid for inclusion in this systematic review. The results of these studies were presented differently: In order to effectively analyze the selected papers and bring out the results more clearly, a categorization of the approaches adopted in the studies was carried out. The approaches identified were: “Natural Moral Sense,” “Social Relationships and Moral Development,” and “Environmental Factors and Moral Development.” The evidence that emerged from the analysis of the papers was collected to produce a general basic model that explains moral development while also serving as a link between the various studies. First, moral sense is found to be innate in humans; individuals can naturally respond morally to various dilemmas. As seen among children and young infants, moral sense naturally exists. Second, it can be socially nurtured through social interactions and exposure to various environmental factors. Various research studies were reviewed in this systematic review to obtain a consensus on how moral sense emerges and develops. From the systematic review, the moral sense is found to be innate. However, moral development is fostered by social interactions and environmental factors. (shrink)

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is currently reserved predominantly for bridging patients to a different destination therapy, but the use of ECMO as a destination therapy itself (ECMO-DT...