Drawing on philosophy, law and political science, and on a wealth of practical experience delivering emergency medical services in conflict-ridden settings, Lepora and Goodin untangle the complexities surrounding compromise and complicity.

Slurs are derogatory terms targeting individuals and groups of individuals on the basis of race, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation. The aim of my paper is to propose an account of appropriated uses of slurs – i.e. uses by targeted groups of their own slurs for non-derogatory purposes, as in the appropriation of ‘nigger’ by the African-American community, or the appropriation of ‘queer’ by the homosexual community. In my proposal appropriated uses are conceived as echoic, in Relevance Theory terms: (...) in-groups echo derogatory uses in ways and contexts that make manifest the dissociation from the offensive contents. I will show that the echoic strategy has interesting advantages over alternative theories, and especially over Anderson and Lepore’s deflationary strategy. (shrink)

There is a vast class of things that science has so far almost entirely neglected. They are central to the understanding of physical reality both at an everyday level and at the level of the most fundamental phenomena in physics, yet have traditionally been assumed to be impossible to incorporate into fundamental scientific explanations. They are facts not about what is--the actual--but about what could be: counterfactuals. According to physicist Chiara Marletto, laws about things being possible or impossible may (...) generate an alternative way of providing explanations. This fascinating, far-reaching approach holds promise for revolutionizing the way fundamental physics is formulated, but also for providing essential tools to face existing technological challenges, from delivering the next generation of information-processing devices, beyond the universal quantum computer, to designing AIs. Each chapter in the book delineates how an existing vexed open problem in science can be solved by this radically different approach; and it is augmented by short fictional stories that explicate the main point of the chapter. As Marletto demonstrates, contemplating what is possible can give us a more complete and hopeful picture of the physical world. (shrink)

Eating disorders are mental illnesses that can have a significant and persistent physical impact, especially for those who are not treated early in their disease trajectory. Although many persons w...

In recent times, phenomena of conversational asymmetry have become a lively object of study for linguists, philosophers of language and moral philosophers—under various labels: illocutionary disablement and silencing, discursive injustice :440–457, 2014; Lance and Kukla in Ethics 123:456–478, 2013), illocutionary distortion. The common idea is that members of underprivileged groups sometimes have trouble performing particular speech acts that they are entitled to perform: in certain contexts, their performative potential is somehow undermined, and their capacity to do things with words is (...) distorted or even annulled. In this paper I will assess this idea, focusing on Rebecca Kukla’s and Rae Langton’s accounts; in particular, I will criticize the role the notion of uptake plays in their accounts, and claim that it may ultimately undermine the very idea of discursive injustice. While, according to Kukla and Langton, members of disadvantaged groups are victims of a kind of uptake failure, leading to illocutionary disablement and even silencing, in the account I present they are victims of a kind of communicative disablement. My overall aim is to develop a notion of discursive injustice that is more plausible and more effective for our broader purposes of criticising the structures of power and oppression. (shrink)

Between the radical, creative capacity of our imagination and the social imaginary we are immersed in is an intermediate space philosophers have termed the imaginal, populated by images or (re)presentations that are presences in themselves. Offering a new, systematic understanding of the imaginal and its nexus with the political, Chiara Bottici brings fresh perspective to the formation of political and power relationships and the paradox of a world rich in imagery yet seemingly devoid of imagination. Bottici begins by defining (...) the difference between the imaginal and the imaginary, locating the imaginal's root meaning in the image and its ability to both characterize a public and establish a set of activities within that public. She identifies the imaginal's critical role in powering representative democracies and its amplification through globalization. She then addresses the troublesome increase in images now mediating politics and the transformation of politics into empty spectacle. The spectacularization of politics has led to its virtualization, Bottici observes, transforming images into processes with an uncertain relationship to reality, and, while new media has democratized the image in a global society of the spectacle, the cloned image no longer mediates politics but does the act for us. Bottici concludes with politics' current search for legitimacy through an invented ideal of tradition, a turn to religion, and the incorporation of human rights language. (shrink)

Sex and dementia is becoming an increasingly important topic in applied ethics. By the year 2030, more than 74.7 million people are expected to be diagnosed with dementia worldwide; many of these people may want to engage in sex. The question of how to manage cases of sex and dementia is occurring more frequently in practical cases because of our aging population. The primary reason that sex and dementia is ethically complex is because sexual consent is both legally and morally (...) significant, yet many people with dementia may be unable to consent in accordance with current standards. In this dissertation, I introduce three frameworks that could be used to approach cases of sex and dementia. The first framework is that of relational autonomy and supported decision-making; this framework tries to enable people with dementia to make autonomous sexual decisions with support. The next approach is a framework of advance sexual consent, which considers the relevance of prior autonomous sexual decisions. The third framework focuses on prioritizing well-being above a person’s capacity to make autonomous decisions and to consent to sex. I assess each framework and consider their positive and negative nuances. The overall goal is to balance the right to sexuality while at the same time protecting people with dementia from undue harm. Ultimately, this dissertation shows that cases of sex and dementia ought to be managed on a case-by-case basis; one framework will not work for every context. In order to approach situations on a case-by-case basis, I contend that a process of weighing and balancing norms and principles is necessary. I use Beauchamp and Childress’s method of weighing and balancing to propose a systematic procedure. This process takes various factors into account in order to determine how to proceed in an ethically defensible manner. According to an approach of weighing and balancing, sexual acts would not be immediately barred based on a person’s inability to consent; rather, a person’s present convictions, the sexual activity to which they want to participate, the possibility of experiencing undue harm, their prior wishes and values, their capacity to make autonomous decisions with support, etc. would all be considered. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the complex topic of sex and dementia and offers a starting point for further discussion on how to approach these cases in practice. (shrink)

This paper investigates Philomela's metamorphosis into a swallow as inferred from Sophocles’ fragmentary Tereus. The first part focusses on the association between the swallow and barbaric language, casting new light on Philomela's characterization in the play. The second investigates the shuttle, the weaving tool which prompts the recognition of Philomela, arguing that the mention of its ‘voice’ in fr. 595 Radt refers not only to the tapestry which it created, but also to the actual sound of the shuttle, which ancient (...) Greeks associated with the swallow, and thus anticipates Philomela's metamorphosis. The representation of Philomela as a speech-impeded and yet vocal character supports the Dionysiac background of the act of vengeance which she and her sister commit. (shrink)

The current situation around COVID-19 portrays a threat to us in several ways: It imposes uncertainty, a lack of control and reminds us of our own mortality. People around the world have reacted to these threats in seemingly unrelated ways: From stockpiling yeast and toilet paper to favoring nationalist ideas or endorsing conspiratorial beliefs. According to the General Process Model of Threat and Defense the confrontation with a threat - a discrepant experience - makes humans react with both proximal and (...) distal threat responses. While the proximal response manifests in behavioral inhibition that leads to heightened anxious arousal and vigilance, distal responses seek to lower behavioral inhibition and the associated state of anxiety and vigilance through engaging in distal defenses. In the present research, we propose that the reactions to COVID-19 may represent distal defense strategies to the pandemic (in the form of environmental or group related worldview defenses) and therefore can be explained and forecasted by the model. Thus we hypothesized increased perceived COVID-19 threat perception to lead to a proximal threat response in the form of heightened behavioral inhibition. This, in return, should enhance the use of distal defenses (i.e.: several ingroup biases, system justification and conspiratorial beliefs) overlapping with the reactions observed as a response to COVID-19. This hypothesized mediated effect of increased perceived COVID-19 threat on distal defenses was tested in two pre-registered studies: In Study 1 (N = 358) results showed perceived COVID-19 threat to be related to behavioral inhibition and in turn to be associated with increased distal defenses (i.e., higher entitativity, control restoration motivation, passive party support). In Study 2 (N = 348) we manipulated COVID-19 threat salience and found results suggesting the distal defenses of system justification and conspiratorial beliefs to be mediated by the proximal threat response. The results of the present research hint towards a common mechanism through which the seemingly unrelated reactions to COVID-19 can be explained. The results might help to predict future behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic and design measures to counteract detrimental effects of the pandemic. (shrink)

Intimacy: From Transformation to Transmutation The paper reflects the historical and current dynamism of the concept of intimacy. Besides differences between scientific disciplines in understanding what the substance of intimacy is, the recent discourse on change in intimacy has been dominated by the transformation theme introduced by Anthony Giddens (1992). Led by reflections of Richard Sennett (1986) the author draws attention to the opposite aspect of change in intimacy—the change in content, or the "transmutation" of intimacy. Transmutation of intimacy—the substitution (...) of the satisfaction of intimate needs with identity creation—not only contests the very essence of intimacy, but also constitutes a significant challenge for the project of intimate citizenship (Plummer 2003). (shrink)

Boredom, in cinema as well as in our everyday experience, is usually associated with a generalised loss of meaning or interest. Accordingly, boredom is often perceived as that which ought to be avo...

This article re-examines the scholium on Euripides, Andromache 445, which several scholars have used to support the claim that Andromache premiered outside Athens, and concludes that both the scholium itself and a remark in the play's hypothesis rather suggest that the play was produced in Athens as part of a dramatic competition.

§ 219a of the German Penal Code (StGB) – the so-called ban on advertising abortions – has been subject of an increasing legal-political controversy since 2017 and was dropped by legislation in July 2022. This paper examines and reconstructs the extent to which the aforementioned ‘ban on advertising’ was (in–)‌compatible with recognized standards of medical ethics. For this purpose, arguments put forward in public discourse on both sides of the conflict, insofar as they go beyond basic attitudes toward abortion, will (...) be subjected to a plausibility test from the perspective of medical ethics. This will show that (I.) according to the standard understanding of autonomy in medical ethics by Beauchamp and Childress, the provision of information about abortions is not an undue influence, but a necessary precondition for autonomous decisions by pregnant women; that (II.) the feared undesirable social developments after the abolition of § 219a StGB are empirically unfounded and largely implausible; but that on the other hand (iii) a multi-perspective communication landscape with accessible expert information promises to effectively counteract the self- and external stigmatization of unintentionally pregnant women. As a result, this analysis provides two things: a coherent medico-ethical justification for the annulment of § 219a StGB and an argumentative basis for the defense against future efforts to support biopolitical positions by censoring available information. (shrink)

Founding our analysis on the Geneva-Brussels approach to quantum mechanics, we use conventional macroscopic objects as guiding examples to clarify the content of two important results of the beginning of twentieth century: Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen’s reality criterion and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. We then use them in combination to show that our widespread belief in the existence of microscopic particles is only the result of a cognitive illusion, as microscopic particles are not particles, but are instead the ephemeral spatial and local manifestations of (...) non-spatial and non-local entities. (shrink)

The paper emphasizes the inadequacy of formal semantics, the classical paradigm in semantics, in treating contextual dependence. Some phenomena of contextual dependence threaten one central assumption of the classical paradigm, namely the idea that linguistic expressions have a fixed meaning, and utterances have truth conditions well defined. It is possible to individuate three forms of contextual dependence: the one affecting pure indexicals, the one affecting demonstratives and "contextual expressions", and the one affecting all linguistic expressions. The third type of dependence (...) is top-down: context, and not only linguistic material, shows which variables must be instantiated, relying on context itself. The generalization of underdetermination to all linguistic expressions is in fact a kind of metadependence: the mode of dependence itself depends on context. (shrink)

In the second lecture of "Naming and Necessity," Saul Kripke presented a new and quite convincing picture of the reference of proper names. At the same time, however, he expressed some skepticism towards the possibility of developing it into a full-blown theory by offering “more exact conditions for reference to take place.” In this paper, after discussing the reasons for his skepticism, I hint at how I think Kripke’s picture could be developed and offer an outline of a theory of (...) reference based on it. One of the key notions my ‘theory’ makes use of is that of repetition, which I take from Kaplan’s “Words.”. (shrink)

Il presente contributo mira a gettare luce sulla figura ebraica dello Schlemihl, per come questa è venuta ad assumere, nei discorsi di Rahel Varnhagen, Hannah Arendt e Lea Ritter Santini, la funzione extra-letteraria di dispositivo di riconoscimento e schema esistenziale. È nella triangolazione dei discorsi e delle vite di queste tre intellettuali appartenenti, ognuna a suo modo, alla cultura tedesca, che la figura dello Schlemihl ha esemplarmente dispiegato la sua forza genetica, come metafora di un destino in cui, fin dal (...) momento del suo apparire letterario nella società dei salotti berlinesi di primo Ottocento grazie ad Adelbert von Chamisso, hanno riconosciuto se stesse coloro che hanno dovuto ritagliare la propria vita sul fondamento dello sradicamento e di una esclusione primigenia. In quella che potrebbe essere compresa come una vera e propria genealogia, il riferirsi allo Schlemihl di Rahel Varnhagen, Hannah Arendt e Lea Ritter Santini restituisce il senso comune di uno sfaccettato subire e agire lo sradicamento, entro la cornice di un discorso prismatico – sotto forma di lettere, saggi e poesie – che nel nutrirsi di vita e pensiero ha saputo raccontare la marginalità nelle sue forme differenti e contigue. (shrink)

This book offers a multidisciplinary look at the much-debated concept of “personalized medicine”. By combining a humanistic and a scientific approach, the book builds up a multidimensional way to understand the limits and potentialities of a personalized approach in medicine and healthcare. The book reflects on personalized medicine and complex diseases, the relationship between personalized medicine and the new bio-technologies, personalized medicine and personalized nutrition, and on some ethical, political, economic, and social implications of personalized medicine. This volume is of (...) interest to researchers from several disciplines including philosophy, bio-medicine, and the social sciences. (shrink)

In this chapter, I will present an empirical conjecture to the effect that some bodily actions are categorically perceived. These are bodily actions such as grasping or reaching for something, which I am going to call motor actions. My conjecture builds on one recently put forward about how the categorical perception of facial expressions of some emotions works. I shall motivate my own conjecture on the basis of both theoretical and empirical considerations, describe how it could be operationalised and what (...) explanatory gain could be obtained from it. (shrink)

Drawing attention to the vexed relationship between feminist theory and philosophy, Is Feminist Philosophy Philosophy? demonstrates the spectrum of significant work being done at this contested boundary. The volume offers clear statements by seventeen distinguished scholars as well as a full range of philosophical approaches; it also presents feminist philosophers in conversation both as feminists and as philosophers, making the book accessible to a wide audience. -/- Table of Contents -/- Opening plenary: Drucilla Cornell, Jacques Derrida, and Teresa Brennan — (...) Discussion / Teresa Brennan ... et al. — Women, identity, and philosophy / Marjorie C. Miller — The personal is philosophical, or teaching a life and living the truth: philosophical pedagogy at the boundaries of self / Ruth Ginzberg — Musing as a feminist and as a philosopher on a postfeminist era / Patricia S. Mann — Essence against identity / Teresa Brennan — Feminist interpretations of social and political thought / Virginia Held — Mothers, citizenship, and independence: a critique of pure family values / Iris Marion Young — Domestic abuse and Locke's liberal (mis)treatment of family / Matthew R. Silliman — Marx, Irigaray, and the politics of reproduction / Alys Eve Weinbaum — The very idea of feminist epistemology / Lynn Hankinson Nelson — Can there be a feminist logic? / Marjorie Hass — Feminism and mental representation: analytic philosophy, cultural studies, and narrow content / David Golumbia — Replies to Hass and Columbia / Nickolas Pappas — Leaping ahead: feminist theory without metaphysics / Leslie A. MacAvoy — Philosophy abandons women: gender, orality, and some literate pre-Socratics / Cornelia A. Tsakiridou. (shrink)

O presente artigo visa explorar as ricas relações entre Voltaire e Genebra, destacando as questões e o contexto que formam a obra Ideias republicanas e seu combate pela tolerância.

In this book, originally published in 2007, Chiara Bottici argues for a philosophical understanding of political myth. Bottici demonstrates that myth is a process, one of continuous work on a basic narrative pattern that responds to a need for significance. Human beings need meaning in order to master the world they live in, but they also need significance in order to live in a world that is less indifferent to them. This is particularly true in the realm of politics. (...) Political myths are narratives through which we orient ourselves, and act and feel about our political world. Bottici shows that in order to come to terms with contemporary phenomena, such as the clash between civilizations, we need a Copernican revolution in political philosophy. If we want to save reason, we need to look at it from the standpoint of myth. (shrink)

We consider the classical concept of time of permanence and observe that its quantum equivalent is described by a bona fide self-adjoint operator. Its interpretation, by means of the spectral theorem, reveals that we have to abandon not only the idea that quantum entities would be characterizable in terms of spatial trajectories but, more generally, that they would possess the very attribute of spatiality. Consequently, a permanence time shouldn’t be interpreted as a “time” in quantum mechanics, but as a measure (...) of the total availability of a quantum entity in participating to a process of creation of a spatial localization. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Kant's account of physical geography and his theory of the Earth. In spelling out the epistemological foundations of Kant's physical geography, the paper examines 1) their connection to the mode of holding-to-be-true, mathematical construction and empirical certainty and 2) their implications for Kant's view of cosmopolitan right. Moreover, by showing the role played by the mathematical model of the Earth for the foundations of Kant's Doctrine of Right, the exact relationship between the latter and physical geography (...) is highlighted. Finally, this paper shows how, in Kant's view, the progress of physical geography can be assured if and only if the free circulation of human beings is established and regulated by law. Therefore, examining the mutual relationship between the theory of Earth and the foundations of right opens new perspectives on the relationship between epistemology and practical philosophy within Kant's system. (shrink)