This paper traces the ancestry of a familiar historiographical narrative, according to which early modern philosophy was marked by the development of empiricism, rationalism, and their synthesis by Immanuel Kant. It is often claimed that this narrative became standard in the nineteenth century, due to the influence of Thomas Reid, Kant and his disciples, or German Hegelians and British Idealists. The paper argues that the narrative became standard only at the turn of the twentieth century. This was not due to (...) the influence of Reid, German Hegelians, or British Idealists as they did not endorse the narrative, although Thomas Hill Green may have facilitated its uptake. The narrative is based on Kant’s historiographical sketches, as corrected and integrated by Karl Leonhard Reinhold. It was first fleshed out into full-fledged histories by two Kantians, Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann and Johann Gottlieb Buhle. Numerous historians, several of whom were not Kantians, spread it in the English-speaking world. They include Kuno Fischer, Friedrich Ueberweg, Richard Falckenberg, and Wilhelm Windelband. However, the wide availability of their works did not suffice to make the narrative standard because, until the 1890s, the Hegelian account was at least as popular as theirs. Among the factors that allowed the narrative to become standard are its aptness to be adopted by philosophers of the most diverse persuasions, its simplicity and suitability for teaching. (shrink)

I argue that appeals to conscience do not constitute reasons for granting healthcare professionals exemptions from providing services they consider immoral. My argument is based on a comparison between a type of objection that many people think should be granted, i.e. to abortion, and one that most people think should not be granted, i.e. to antibiotics. I argue that there is no principled reason in favour of conscientious objection qua conscientious that allows to treat these two cases differently. Therefore, I (...) conclude that there is no principled reason for granting conscientious objection qua conscientious in healthcare. What matters for the purpose of justifying exemptions is not whether an objection is ‘conscientious’, but whether it is based on the principles and values informing the profession. I provide examples of acceptable forms of objection in healthcare. (shrink)

Conflict of interests in medicine are typically taken to be financial in nature: it is often assumed that a COI occurs when a healthcare practitioner’s financial interest conflicts with patients’ interests, public health interests, or professional obligations more generally. Even when non-financial COIs are acknowledged, ethical concerns are almost exclusively reserved for financial COIs. However, the notion of “interests” cannot be reduced to its financial component. Individuals in general, and medical professionals in particular, have different types of interests, many of (...) which are non-financial in nature but can still conflict with professional obligations. The debate about healthcare delivery has largely overlooked this broader notion of interests. Here, we will focus on health practitioners’ moral or religious values as particular types of personal interests involved in healthcare delivery that can generate COIs and on conscientious objection in healthcare as the expression of a particular type of COI. We argue that, in the healthcare context, the COIs generated by interests of conscience can be as ethically problematic, and therefore should be treated in the same way, as financial COIs. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue against the received view among Unamuno scholars that Miguel de Unamuno was defending a sort of pragmatic argument for religious faith and that his notion of religious faith as “querer creer” (“wanting to believe”) is to be identified with William James’s “the will to believe”. As I will show in this paper, one of the aspects that makes Unamuno’s reasoning philosophically relevant is his ability to formulate a non-pragmatist defense of religious faith (...) without a prior commitment to the truth of any religious or theological statement and grounded in our longing for an endless existence through God’s Salvation. (shrink)

Using the optical ether as a case study, this article advances four lines of consideration to show why synchronic versions of the divide et impera strategy of scientific realism are unlikely to work. The considerations draw from the nineteenth-century theories of light, the rise of surprising implication as an epistemic value from the time of Fresnel on, assessments of the ether in end-of-century reports around 1900, and the roots of ether theorizing in now superseded metaphysical assumptions. The typicality of the (...) case and its impact on diachronic versions of the strategy are briefly discussed. (shrink)

In his highly regarded history of the rise of clinical trials in America, HarryMarks describes how their widespread adoption resulted largely fromthe efforts of ‘therapeutic reformers’ who sought to replace the individualexpertise of clinicians with the ‘science of controlled experiment’. Thetransition described by Marks resembles in many respects the transition fromthe ‘truth-to-nature’ objectivity of individual experts to a ‘mechanical’ formof objectivity portrayed by Daston and Galison. In particular,Marks details the passage from a regime of trust in expertise and experts to (...) aregime based on the mechanical generation of data, the elimination ofhuman judgement and the adoption of a ‘view from nowhere’ where individual and group idiosyncrasies are systematically suppressedthrough recourse to quantitative methods.[...]. (shrink)

I argue that appeals to conscience do not constitute reasons for granting healthcare professionals exemptions from providing services they consider immoral (e.g. abortion). My argument is based on a comparison between a type of objection that many people think should be granted, i.e. to abortion, and one that most people think should not be granted, i.e. to antibiotics. I argue that there is no principled reason in favour of conscientious objection qua conscientious that allows to treat these two cases differently. (...) Therefore, I conclude that there is no principled reason for granting conscientious objection qua conscientious in healthcare. What matters for the purpose of justifying exemptions is not whether an objection is ‘conscientious’, but whether it is based on the principles and values informing the profession. I provide examples of acceptable forms of objection in healthcare. (shrink)

A completeness theorem is established for logics with congruence endowed with general semantics (in the style of general frames). As a corollary, completeness is shown to be preserved by fibring logics with congruence provided that congruence is retained in the resulting logic. The class of logics with equivalence is shown to be closed under fibring and to be included in the class of logics with congruence. Thus, completeness is shown to be preserved by fibring logics with equivalence and general semantics. (...) An example is provided showing that completeness is not always preserved by fibring ligics endowed with standard (non general) semantics. A categorial characterization of fibring is provided using coproducts and cocartesian liftings. (shrink)

Reliance on intuitive and emotive responses is widespread across many areas of bioethics, and the current debate on biotechnological human enhancement is particularly interesting in this respect. A strand of “bioconservatives” that has explicitly drawn connections to the modern conservative tradition, dating back to Edmund Burke, appeals explicitly to the alleged wisdom of our intuitions and emotions to ground opposition to some biotechnologies or their uses. So-called bioliberals, those who in principle do not oppose human bioenhancement, tend to rely on (...) rational arguments and to see intuitions and emotions mostly as sources of biases. This approach often translates into shifting the burden of proof onto bioconservatives and challenging them to provide arguments against the proposed enhancement to back what bioliberals perceive as merely intuitive, emotive, and irrational reactions. -/- In this article, I am going to show that the methodological divide between bioliberals and bioconservatives is less significant than at first glance it appears to be and less significant than it is often taken to be. I will do so by defending two theses. The first is that reliance on intuitions and emotions is not a prerogative of bioconservatives: bioliberals have their typical intuitions and emotive responses and are for this reason exposed to potential biases in the same way as bioconservatives are. The second thesis is that reliance on intuitions and emotions is not necessarily antithetic to reason and rationality. This latter thesis has been philosophically defended with particular reference to the debate on biotechnologies, while the former is perhaps more controversial and more difficult to accept—at least for bioliberals. In both cases, I will support the claims by drawing on resources from the field of moral psychology and the sciences of the mind and, particularly, by applying to some positions in the enhancement debate recent findings about the role of intuitions and emotions in human moral assessment. This new empirically informed perspective holds promises for solving the methodological controversy between bioconservatives and bioliberals, thus enabling proper dialogue and debate between the two sides. (shrink)

The debate around lockdowns as a response to the recent pandemic is typically framed in terms of a tension between freedom and health. However, on some views, protection of health or reduction of virus‐related risks can also contribute to freedom. Therefore, there might be no tension between freedom and health in public health restrictions. I argue that such views fail to appreciate the different understandings of freedom that are involved in the trade‐off between freedom and health. Grasping these distinctions would (...) allow to appreciate why different people give more weight to different aspects of limitations of freedom, including whether certain options are made simply risky or impossible, whether limitations of freedom are posed intentionally or happen accidentally, whether risks are beyond a threshold of acceptability, and who gets to decide that. I provide a conceptual analysis of the relationship between different types of freedom, public health policies, viruses and diseases. As I argue, identifying what freedom‐based reasons count for and against different types of public health restrictions requires distinguishing between viruses and diseases, between lockdowns and other types of restrictive policies, and between risks posed by viruses and threats of penalties involved by restrictive policies. (shrink)

We investigate the uniform computational content of the open and clopen Ramsey theorems in the Weihrauch lattice. While they are known to be equivalent to $\mathrm {ATR_0}$ from the point of view of reverse mathematics, there is not a canonical way to phrase them as multivalued functions. We identify eight different multivalued functions and study their degree from the point of view of Weihrauch, strong Weihrauch, and arithmetic Weihrauch reducibility. In particular one of our functions turns out to be strictly (...) stronger than any previously studied multivalued functions arising from statements around $\mathrm {ATR}_0$. (shrink)

All over Europe, the provision of healthcare services is widely considered a primary duty of the government. Universal access to medical care can be considered a basic ingredient of the so-called “European social model.” But if universal access to medical care is seldom questioned, European governments—faced with expanding costs caused by an increasing demand driven by an aging population and technology-driven improvements—are contemplating the possibility of “rationing”1 treatments, or the possibility of allowing a greater role for private suppliers. If a (...) “multi-tier” healthcare system has long been anathema to the European leadership, guaranteeing a uniform access to state-of-the-art care seems to be well beyond the means of states suffering from persisting debt crisis. Was the failure of state-controlled “adequate” healthcare totally unpredictable? Far-sighted criticisms had been offered by two eminent thinkers in the classical liberal tradition, Herbert Spencer and Friedrich A. von Hayek . Neither author is usually recognized as a forerunner of contemporary critics of the welfare state, and both investigated the issue of the state financing and providing health services well before or right after the establishment of national health services. With the benefit of hindsight, reading Spencer and Hayek helps us to understand how the crisis of state-supplied healthcare is not rooted in the mere progress of clinical technology, but is rather the logical consequence of the theoretical basis of the model itself. Whereas modern theorists of the welfare state tend to offer theories that are impervious to a critical appraisal of their unintended consequences—insofar as they are framed in a language of “rights”—both Hayek and Spencer understood that human systems are complex, and that unwanted effects of public policy should be taken into account. Although Spencer emphasized the moral hazards accruing from the paternalism involved in governmental provision of health services, Hayek explained how modern healthcare systems differ from real, private insurance designed to offer proper coverage against risks. These authors appreciated that the politicization of healthcare was bound to result in both standardization of care and disregard for the responsibility that comes with personal freedom. These two “diagnoses before the illness” can help us in defining the challenges and the potential solutions that healthcare systems face today. Understanding the fatal conceits inherent in the very architecture of national health services can be the first step toward healing our healthcare systems. (shrink)

A common assumption in non-relativistic quantum mechanics is that self-adjoint operators mathematically represent properties of quantum systems. Focusing on spin, we argue that a natural view considers observables as determinable properties and their eigenvalues as their corresponding determinates. We provide a taxonomy of the different views that one can hold, once it is accepted that spin can be modelled with the determinable-determinate relation. In particular, we present the two main families of views, dubbed Spin Monism and Pluralism, and we show (...) that the current literature does not take a stance between the two. Then we put forward two arguments in favour of the former. Finally, we present a new account of Spin Monism, that is absent in current literature; such a view is worth discussing, or so we contend, because several compelling considerations support it, and it opens new ways of thinking about the ontology of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Unamuno saw in his defense of religious faith a response to Nietzsche’s criticisms of the Christian, agapeic way of life. To Nietzsche’s claim that engaging in this way of life is something antinatural and life-denying, insofar as it goes against the (alleged) natural tendency to increase one’s own power, Unamuno responded that an agapeic way of life is precisely a direct expression of this natural tendency. Far from being something that goes against our natural inclinations, Unamuno says, an agapeic way (...) of life is a life-affirming exercise, something we are led to given our own natural condition. Hence, the aim of this essay is to comment on Unamuno’s criticism of Nietzsche and to point out the philosophical relevance of Unamuno’s attempt to provide a natural foundation for religious faith when assessing Nietzsche’s criticisms of the possibility of carrying out a Christian, agapeic way of life. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 9, September 2020, Page 62-65.

RESUMO O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a concepção de liberdade encontrada em "Discourses concerning government" de Algernon Sidney. Mantendo a perspectiva republicana, a liberdade é definida pela ausência de dominação, ou seja, pela não submissão, sujeição ou exposição à vontade arbitrária de outra pessoa; e assumindo a perspectiva jusnaturalista, a liberdade é considerada um direito natural, inerente à condição humana, que deve ser preservado e assegurado pela autoridade política. Pretende-se discutir como Sidney articula essas duas perspectivas em sua teoria (...) política, projetando a concepção republicana de liberdade na modernidade.ABSTRACT The objective of this paper is to analyze the concept of freedom found in Algernon Sidney’s "Discourses Concerning government". Keeping the republican thought, freedom is defined by the absence of domination, i.e., the denial of submission, bondage or exposure to the arbitrary will of another person; and taking the jusnaturalist thought, freedom is considered a natural right inherent to the human condition, which must be preserved and guaranteed by the political authority. I intend to discuss how Sidney articulates these two perspectives in his political theory, outlining the republican conception of freedom in modernity. (shrink)

The author presents his views on the factors that led the Church to dialogue with Jews, after a history marked by Catholic rule and persecution of the Jewish people. Also exposes some biblical Jewish contribution to the topic such as technic of discussion / study called pilpul and the content of extensive discussions found in the Talmud, that demonstrate the central role that dialogue and philosophical inquiry have in Judaism. It also adds the contemporary Jewish contributions to the universal thought (...) made by the philosophy developed by the Jewish thinker Martin Buber, corroborating the central and uninterrupted place of dialogue in Judaism since its birth. Throughout the presentation connections are made with the Nostra Aetate Declaration, showing the Church key position in the theme of dialogue with the Jews and the 10 points of Seelisberg and the “12 points of Berlin”, result of the interaction between Christians and Jews after the Holocaust. (shrink)

Antonio Rosmini-Serbati was one of the first natural law scholars to bring natural law thinking into a conversation with the market economic order that was beginning to emerge in Europe in the 19th century. His reflections on matters such as the origin, nature, and limits of private property, the role of the state, and the nature of human reason show him to be a unique, innovative thinker who nonetheless was determined to work within the parameters of Catholic doctrine. Many of (...) these ideas are concretized in his seminal work The Constitution Under Social Justice, a text that has profound instights to offer those today seeking to integrate theology, philosophy, and economics into their conceptions of a social order that aspires to be both free and just. (shrink)