‘Can you tell me, Philocles, what in the world it is that makes many men so fond of lying that they delight in telling preposterous tales themselves and listen with especial attention to those who spin yarns of that sort?’ In the seventh book of his Historia Ecclesiastica the church historian Sozomen provides us with a detailed account of the social and political climate and subsequent motives which precipitated the outbreak of the Riot of the Statues in Antioch a.d. 387. (...) According to his version ‘on the night before the sedition occurred, a spectre was seen in the form of a woman of prodigious height and terrible aspect, pacing through the streets of the city, lashing the air with an ill-sounding whip, similar to that which is used in goading on the beasts brought forward at the public theatres. It might have been inferred that the sedition was excited by the agency of some evil and malicious demon. There is no doubt but that much bloodshed would have ensued, had not the wrath of the emperor been stayed by his respect for this sacerdotal entreaty.’. (shrink)

In order to present the philosopher Alberto Wagner de Reyna, we must first understand his life, then his work, and finally the force of his ideas; especially those which establish him within the history of philosophical ideas. This paper presents a synthesis of the conversation that the author..

Conversación entre Alberto Ciria, ganador del premio anual 2015 a la promoción de la filosofía y la cultura en Málaga que entrega FICUM, y Alejandro Rojas (presidente de FICUM) en torno a la pregunta ¿qué es para ti la filosofía?

On the most general level, this essay addresses the ways race is deployed in biomedical solutions to infertility. Szkupinski Quiroga begins with general assertions about fertility technology. She then explores how fertility technology reinforces biological links between parents and children and argues that most options reflect and privilege white kinship patterns and fears about race mixing. She illustrates these observations with interviews she has collected.

Kant scholars have rarely addressed the centuries-old tradition of casuistry and the concept of conscience in Kant’s writings. This book offers a detailed exploration of the period from Pascal’s Provincial Letters to Kant’s critique of probabilism and discusses his proposal of a (new) casuistry as part of an moral education. / Trotz der Hinweise an wichtigen Stellen in Kants Schriften richtet die Kantforschung ihre Aufmerksamkeit nur selten auf die Jahrhunderte währende Tradition der Kasuistik und den Begriff des Gewissens, der in (...) ihrem Rahmen ausgearbeitet wird. Eingehend untersucht wird in diesem Buch insbesondere der Zeitabschnitt von Pascals »Briefen in die Provinz« bis zu Kants eigener Kritik des Probabilismus und seinem Entwurf einer (neuen) Kasuistik als Teil der ethischen Methodenlehre. (shrink)

What is racism? is a timely question that is hotly contested in the philosophy of race. Yet disagreement about racism’s nature does not begin in philosophy, but in the sociopolitical domain. Alberto G. Urquidez argues that philosophers of race have failed to pay sufficient attention to the practical considerations that prompt the question “What is racism?” Most theorists assume that “racism” signifies a language-independent phenomenon that needs to be “discovered” by the relevant science or “uncovered” by close scrutiny of (...) everyday usage of this term. (Re-)Defining Racism challenges this metaphysical paradigm. Urquidez develops a Wittgenstein-inspired framework that illuminates the use of terms like “definition,” “meaning,” “explanation of meaning,” and “disagreement,” for the analysis of contested normative concepts. These elucidations reveal that providing a definition of “racism” amounts to recommending a form of moral representation—a rule for the correct use of “racism.” As definitional recommendations must be justified on pragmatic grounds, Urquidez takes as a starting point for justification the interests of racism's historical victims. (shrink)

In his essay against Eberhard, Kant denies that there are innate concepts. Several scholars take Kant’s statement at face value. They claim that Kant did not endorse concept innatism, that the categories are not innate concepts, and that Kant’s views on innateness are significantly different from Leibniz’s. This paper takes issue with those claims. It argues that Kant’s views on the origin of the intellectual concepts are remarkably similar to Leibniz’s. Given two widespread notions of innateness, the dispositional notion and (...) the input/output notion, intellectual concepts are innate for Kant no less than for Leibniz. (shrink)

We describe a form of moral artificial intelligence that could be used to improve human moral decision-making. We call it the “artificial moral advisor”. The AMA would implement a quasi-relativistic version of the “ideal observer” famously described by Roderick Firth. We describe similarities and differences between the AMA and Firth’s ideal observer. Like Firth’s ideal observer, the AMA is disinterested, dispassionate, and consistent in its judgments. Unlike Firth’s observer, the AMA is non-absolutist, because it would take into account the human (...) agent’s own principles and values. We argue that the AMA would respect and indeed enhance individuals’ moral autonomy, help individuals achieve wide and a narrow reflective equilibrium, make up for the limitations of human moral psychology in a way that takes conservatives’ objections to human bioenhancement seriously, and implement the positive functions of intuitions and emotions in human morality without their downsides, such as biases and prejudices. (shrink)

In this paper, I will defend the claim that there are three existence properties: the second-order property of being instantiated, a substantive first-order property (or better a group of such properties) and a formal, hence universal, first-order property. I will first try to show what these properties are and why we need all of them for ontological purposes. Moreover, I will try to show why a Meinong-like option that positively endorses both the former and the latter first-order property is the (...) correct view in ontology. Finally, I will add some methodological remarks as to why this debate has to be articulated from the point of view of reality, i.e., by speaking of properties, rather than from the point of view of language, i.e., by speaking of predicates (for such properties). (shrink)

Die voranschreitenden Forschungen zum Nachlass Hans Blumenbergs zeichnen ein immer scharferes Bild eines Denkers, der sowohl umfangreiche Arbeiten zur Geistes- und Technikgeschichte vorlegte als auch das offentliche Denken beeinflusst hat - unter anderem durch Prasenz im Radio und regelmassige Beitrage zum Feuilleton von FAZ und NZZ. Der Sammelband wird durch ein bisher unveroffentlichtes Forschungsmanuskript Hans Blumenbergs aus dem Themenbereich der Technikphilosophie abgerundet, das fur den Band transkribiert und kommentiert wurde. Mit Beitragen von Hans Blumenberg (aus dem Nachlass), Alberto Fragio, (...) Andrew Hines, Sandra Markewitz, Marco Mauerer, Angus Nicholls, Martina Philippi, Josefa Ros Velasco, Nicola Zambon und Rudiger Zill. (shrink)

The personal is not political, even if politics marks it and, in many cases, determines it. Infrapolitics seeks to understand conditions of existence that are not reducible to political life and that exceed any definition of world bound to political determinations. It seeks to mobilize an exteriority without which politics could only be business or administration, that is, oppression. It demands a change in seeing and an everyday practice that subtracts from political totalization in the name of a new production (...) of desire, of a new emancipation, and of a conception of experience that can breach the general captivation of life. In this book, Alberto Moreiras describes a form of thought aiming to provide content for a form of life and to offer a new theoretical practice for concrete existence. The book provides a genealogy of the notion of infrapolitics and places it within contemporary philosophical reflection, examining its deployment in the wake of postphenomenology and deconstruction, Lacanian analysis, the principle of anarchy, and an egalitarian symbolization of social life. In doing so, Moreiras elaborates Infrapolitics as both a general critique of the political apparatus and as an imperative horizon for existential self-understanding. (shrink)

Comprender los dilemas éticos en torno a la subrogación de útero exige un conocimiento preciso de los conceptos de libertad y autonomía reproductiva. Una aproximación pertinente debe reconocer la naturaleza de la opresión sexual, sobre todo de cómo influye en la autonomía de las mujeres, en sus elecciones, en la identidad propia y en las relaciones interpersonales. El objetivo de este ensayo es defender la relevancia de las críticas del feminismo radical a las corrientes liberales progresistas, que a menudo prestan (...) mayor atención a los intereses de los denominados padres intencionales. Considerando lo que varias filósofas igualitaristas han expuesto desde una perspectiva socio-relacional de la autonomía para permitir la subrogación bajo ciertas condiciones -específicamente, sostienen que la regulación es compatible con la autonomía reproductiva de las mujeres si se sigue una modalidad altruista en un ambiente de protección y apoyo ante la revocación del consentimiento-, defiendo que las feministas radicales esclarecen apropiadamente cómo la opresión contra la mujer permanece en el ambiente cultural que aprueba los contratos de subrogación. La metodología macroscópica, basada en la metáfora del ave enjaulada de la filósofa norteamericana Marilyn Frye, es una herramienta provechosa para comprender por qué la subrogación no implica una mejoría para la autonomía reproductiva de las mujeres, incluso si permite que algunas madres gestantes obtengan un ingreso suficiente para sobrellevar la presión económica. (shrink)

In the tree-like representation of Time, two histories are undivided at a moment t whenever they share a common moment in the future of t. In the present paper, it will first be proved that Ockhamist and Peircean branching-time logics are unable to express some important sentences in which the notion of undividedness is involved. Then, a new semantics for branching-time logic will be presented. The new semantics is based on trees endowed with an indistinguishability function, a generalization of the (...) notion of undividedness. It will be shown that Ockhamist and Peircean semantics can be viewed as limit cases of the semantics developed in this paper. (shrink)

We provide ethical criteria to establish when vaccine mandates for healthcare workers are ethically justifiable. The relevant criteria are the utility of the vaccine for healthcare workers, the utility for patients (both in terms of prevention of transmission of infection and reduction in staff shortage), and the existence of less restrictive alternatives that can achieve comparable benefits. Healthcare workers have professional obligations to promote the interests of patients that entail exposure to greater risks or infringement of autonomy than ordinary members (...) of the public. Thus, we argue that when vaccine mandates are justified on the basis of these criteria, they are not unfairly discriminatory and the level of coercion they involve is ethically acceptable—and indeed comparable to that already accepted in healthcare employment contracts. Such mandates might be justified even when general population mandates are not. Our conclusion is that, given current evidence, those ethical criteria justify mandates for influenza vaccination, but not COVID-19 vaccination, for healthcare workers. We extend our arguments to other vaccines. (shrink)

There are two interpretations of what it means for a singular term to be referentially direct, one truth-conditional and the other cognitive. It has been argued that on the former interpretation, both proper names and indexicals refer directly, whereas on the latter only proper names are directly referential. However, these interpretations in fact apply to the same singular terms. This paper argues that, if conceived in purely normative terms, the linguistic meaning of indexicals can no longer be held to make (...) these terms referentially indirect under the second interpretation. This result is then generalized to proper names, by ascribing them a normative meaning as well. (shrink)

In _Uncanny Rest_ Alberto Moreiras offers a meditation on intellectual life under the suspension of time and conditions of isolation. Focusing on his personal day to day experiences of the “shelter-in-place” period during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, Moreiras engages with the limits and possibilities of critical thought in the realm of the infrapolitical—the conditions of existence that exceed average understandings of politics and philosophy. In each dated entry he works through the process of formulating a life’s (...) worth of thought and writing while attempting to locate the nature of thought once the coordinates of everyday life have changed. Offering nothing less than a phenomenology of thinking, Moreiras shows how thought happens in and out of a life, at a certain crossroads where memories collide, where conversations with interlocutors both living and dead evolve, and thinking during a suspended state becomes provisional and uncertain. (shrink)

A completeness theorem is established for logics with congruence endowed with general semantics. 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 logics endowed with standard semantics. A categorial characterization of fibring is provided using coproducts and cocartesian liftings. (shrink)

On the most general level, this essay addresses the ways race is deployed in biomedical solutions to infertility. Szkupinski Quiroga begins with general assertions about fertility technology. She then explores how fertility technology reinforces biological links between parents and children and argues that most options reflect and privilege white kinship patterns and fears about race mixing. She illustrates these observations with interviews she has collected.

On the most general level, this essay addresses the ways race is deployed in biomedical solutions to infertility. Szkupinski Quiroga begins with general assertions about fertility technology. She then explores how fertility technology reinforces biological links between parents and children and argues that most options reflect and privilege white kinship patterns and fears about race mixing. She illustrates these observations with interviews she has collected.

This book provides a coherent and systematic analysis of Miguel de Unamuno’s notion of religious faith and the reasoning he offers in defense of it. Unamuno developed a non-cognitivist Christian conception of religious faith, defending it as being something which we are all naturally lead to, given our (alleged) most basic and natural inclination to seek an endless existence. Illuminating the philosophical relevance this conception still has to contemporary philosophy of religion, Oya draws connections with current non-cognitivist notions of religious (...) faith in general, and with contemporary religious fictionalist positions more particularly. -/- The book includes a biographical introduction to Miguel de Unamuno, as well as lucid and clear analyses of his notions of the ‘tragic feeling of life’, his epistemological paradigm, and his naturally founded religious fictionalism. Revealing links to current debates, Oya shows how the works of Unamuno are still relevant and enriching today. (shrink)

In Ockhamist branching-time logic [Prior 67], formulas are meant to be evaluated on a specified branch, or history, passing through the moment at hand. The linguistic counterpart of the manifoldness of future is a possibility operator which is read as `at some branch, or history (passing through the moment at hand)'. Both the bundled-trees semantics [Burgess 79] and the $\langle moment, history\rangle$ semantics [Thomason 84] for the possibility operator involve a quantification over sets of moments. The Ockhamist frames are (3-modal) (...) Kripke structures in which this second-order quantification is represented by a first-order quantification. The aim of the present paper is to investigate the notions of modal definability, validity, and axiomatizability concerning 3-modal frames which can be viewed as generalizations of Ockhamist frames. (shrink)

Ambientato nel Regno di Napoli del tardo Seicento, il saggio esplora la cultura dell'epoca attraverso la vicenda biografica dei membri dell'Accademia degli Investiganti, Tommaso Cornelio, Lucantonio Porzio, Francesco d'Andrea e Giuseppe Valletta. Attraverso l'analisi delle opere degli Investiganti, il testo mostra un quadro della loro riflessione filosofico-scientifica dovuta alla diffusione delle teorie atomistiche dei maggiori pensatori europei (Boyle, Descartes, Galilei, etc.) nei circoli partenopei--Back cover.