The article deals with present day challenges related to the employ of technology in order to reduce the exposition of the human being to the risks and vulnerability of his or her existential condition. According to certain transhumanist and posthumanist thinkers, as well as some supporters of human enhancement, essential features of the human being, such as vulnerability and mortality, ought to be thoroughly overcome. The aim of this article is twofold: on the one hand, we wish to carry out (...) an enquiry into the ontological and ethical thinking of Hans Jonas, who was among the first to address these very issues with great critical insight; on the other hand, we endeavour to highlight the relevance of Jonas’ reflections to current challenges related to bioscience and biotechnological progress. In this regard, we believe that the transcendent and metaphysical relevance of the «image of man» introduced by Jonas is of paramount importance to understand his criticism against those attempts to ameliorate the human being by endangering his or her essence. (shrink)

A comparison between the thinking of Hans Jonas and Joseph Ratzinger on Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

Review of a book on brain death and organ transplantation.

The title of this volume A Man of Many Interests: Plutarch on Religion, Myth, and Magic. Essays in honour of Aurelio Pérez Jiménez is first and foremost a coalescing homage to Plutarch and to Aurelio, and to the way they have been inspiring (as master and indirect disciple) a multitude of readers in their path to knowledge, here metonymically represented by the scholars who offer their tribute to them. The analysis developed throughout the several contributions favors a philological approach of (...) wide spectrum, i.e., stemming from literary and linguistic aspects, it projects them into their cultural, religious, philosophical, and historical framework. The works were organized into two broad sections, respectively devoted to the Lives and to the Moralia. Contributors are: Frances Titchener, Carlos Alcalde Martín, José Luis Calvo, Delfim Leão, Judith Mossman, Anastasios G. Nikolaidis, Christopher Pelling, Philip Stadter, Paola Volpe, Francesco Becchi, Israel Muñoz Gallarte, Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta, Geert Roskam, Vicente M. Ramón Palerm, Frederick Brenk, John Dillon, Franco Ferrari, Aristoula Georgiadou, Luc van der Stockt, Luisa Lesage Gárriga. (shrink)

Introduction , Sophie Gibb 1. Mental Causation , John Heil 2. Physical Realization without Preemption , Sydney Shoemaker 3. Mental Causation in the Physical World , Peter Menzies 4. Mental Causation: Ontology and Patterns of Variation , Paul Noordhof 5. Causation is Macroscopic but not Irreducible , David Papineau 6. Substance Causation, Powers, and Human Agency , E. J. Lowe 7. Agent Causation in a Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics , Jonathan D. Jacobs and Timothy O’Connor 8. Mental Causation and Double Prevention , (...) Sophie Gibb 9. The Identity Theory as a Solution to the Exclusion Problem , David Robb 10. Continuant Causation, Fundamentality, and Freedom , Peter Simons 11. There is no Exclusion Problem , Steinvor Tholl Arnadottir and Tim Crane. (shrink)

The view that we are animals -- animalism -- is often misunderstood. It is typically stated in unhelpful or misleading ways. Debates over animalism are often unclear about what question it purports to answer, and what the alternative answers are. The paper tries to state clearly what animalism says and does not say. This enables us to distinguish different versions of animalism.

In this paper, I want to focus on the claim, prominently made by sensorimotor theorists, that perception is something we do. I will argue that understanding perceiving as a bodily doing allows for a strong non-dualistic position on the relation between experience and objective physical events, one which provides insight into why such relation seems problematic while at the same time providing means to relieve the tension. Next I will show how the claim that perception is something we do does (...) not stand in opposition to, and is not refuted by, the fact that we often have perceptual experience without moving. In arguing that cases of motionless perception and perception-like experience are still doings it will be pointed out that the same interactive regularities which are engaged in in active perception still apply to them. Explaining how past interactive regularities can influence current perception or perception-like experience in a way which remains true to the idea that perception is a doing, so I will argue, can be done by invoking the past -- the past itself, however, not its representation. The resulting historical, non-representational sensorimotor approach can join forces with Gibsonian ecological psychology -- provided that such is also understood along lines that don't invoke externalist remnants of contents. (shrink)

John Locke was one of the towering philosophers of the Enlightenment and arguably the greatest English philosopher. Many assumptions we now take for granted, about liberty, knowledge and government, come from Locke and his most influential works, _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding_ and _Two Treatises of Government_. In this superb introduction to Locke's thought, E.J. Lowe covers all the major aspects of his philosophy. Whilst sensitive to the seventeenth-century background to Locke's thought, he concentrates on introducing and assessing Locke in (...) a contemporary philosophical setting, explaining why he is so important today. Beginning with a helpful overview of Locke's life and times, he explains how Locke challenged the idea that the human mind and knowledge of the external world rested on innate principles, laying the philosophical foundations of empiricism later taken up by Berkeley and Hume. Subsequent chapters introduce and critically assess topics fundamental to understanding Locke: his theories of substance and identity, language and meaning, philosophy of action and free will, and political freedom and toleration. In doing so, he explains some of the more complex yet pivotal aspects of Locke's thought, such as his theory that language rests on ideas and how Locke's theory of personal identity paved the way for modern empirical psychology. A final chapter assesses Locke's legacy, and the book includes a helpful chronology of Locke's life and glossary of unfamiliar terms. (shrink)

Part four of the Proceedings of the fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, London, Ontario, Canada, August 27-September 2, 1975.

Because corporate social responsibility (CSR) is potentially beneficial for companies, it is important to understand the factors that improve a company’s CSR practice. Scholars hypothesize that facilitating learning organization characteristics, which are divided in characteristics at the organizational and the operational level, may improve CSR implementation. These characteristics stimulate companies and their members to be critical, learn from the past, and embrace change, but there is limited empirical evidence of this approach. This study addresses this gap by surveying 280 CSR (...) professionals and performing bootstrap mediation analyses to test multiple hypotheses. Learning organization characteristics at the organizational level, play a key role in supporting CSR implementation: leadership for learning, system connection, and group learning show a direct relationship with CSR implementation. It is striking that the role of the learning organization characteristics at the operational level is only indirect; the organizational characteristics mediate their relationship with CSR implementation. (shrink)

A partir da concepção de um racionalismo integral, em que vigora o ideal da plena demonstrabilidade segundo o paradigma identitário da verdade, configura-se em Leibniz a questão da universalidade, que seria enunciada com mais pertinência como a do determinismo universal. São dois aspectos de uma mesma questão: em primeiro lugar, a universalidade no sentido arquitetônico, correspondente à totalidade; em segundo lugar, a determinação absoluta do indivíduo singular. Tanto num caso quanto no outro, a plena determinação é inalcançável para a mente (...) humana. Mas as operações simbólicas de determinação, permitem, de alguma maneira, contornar a impossibilidade de uma visão simultânea e articulada de todos os elementos de um composto e, assim, nos encaminham na direção de uma universalidade determinante. Os fundamentos, os procedimentos e os riscos aí envolvidos constituem o tema desse texto. (shrink)

Little is known about how employees on husbandry farms perceive animal welfare and the factors influencing the relationship between them and the animals they engage with in their daily work. Reporting the findings of qualitative interviews with 23 employees on five Danish farms (mink, dairy and pig production), this paper describes how the employees viewed animal welfare, and discusses how they dealt with animal welfare issues in their daily work. Four distinct rationales for animal welfare were identified. 1) Animal welfare (...) was supported by concerns about production and health, and could be negotiated – especially when it came to the ability of the animals to perform natural behaviour. 2) Animal welfare was connected with the working conditions on the farm. 3) The employees’ views about animal welfare were affected by working conditions over which they had no influence. 4) An awareness of the condition of the animals was seen as obviously needed in relation to production, but a deeper attachment to some animals was also seen. A specific challenge is presented by the increasingly diverse workforce in farming, with one third of the employees on Danish farms coming from abroad. If farm owners are not able to integrate these employees, there is a risk of creating a second-tier of foreign workers who are isolated. Furthermore, it was seen that negative working conditions can be taken out on the animals, or that animal welfare can come to be seen as unimportant as compared with human welfare. (shrink)

This new, second edition of the popular college textbook offers the beginning philosophy student a comprehensive introduction to several aspects of one of the most influential schools of thought in the twentieth century. Professor Klemke begins by pointing out the distinctions among the various types of analytic and linguistic philosophies, while emphasising that they all arose as a response to the formerly predominant school of absolute idealism. After a prologue section containing a representative exposition of idealism by Josiah Royce, the (...) following sections show the radically new philosophical approach of the analytic school in its various guises: realism and common sense (G. E. Moore); logical atomism (Bertrand Russell); logical positivism (A. J. Ayer); conceptual analysis (Gilbert Ryle, G. E. Moore, John Wisdom); logico-metaphysical analysis (Gustav Bergman, W. V. Quine); linguistic analysis (J. L. Austin, P. F. Strawson, J. R. Searle); and the recent development of new realism (Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, Richard N. Boyd). (shrink)

In this chapter, I focus on the experience of torture and, more specifically, on Jean Améry's account of it in his book *At the Mind's Limits*. There he claims that the loss of confidence in the world is the most devastating effect he experienced as a victim of torture. I thus explore what cosmopolitan aspiration may be revealed by this loss and also discuss whether it is to be discredited as an irrational reaction on the victim's side or instead as (...) proportional to the facts and, consequently, as relevant to the conditions under which a certain cosmopolitan aspiration could be achieved or, at least, favored. (shrink)

L'éducation est dans ce livre envisagée comme un geste anthropologique intégral par lequel chaque personne s'achemine vers la plénitude de son être, dans le respect de sa destination naturelle et surnaturelle. À la lumière de cette mystique éducative qui nous fait entrer au coeur de la réalité humaine, l'existence se trouve intensifiée, parce que vécue avec un maximum de profondeur. Encore trop méconnu, l'apport d'Edith Stein en matière d'éducation méritait d'être enfin présenté sous une forme synthétique et accessible. La question (...) éducative occupe une place centrale dans la pensée d'Edith Stein, sans toutefois faire l'objet d'une mise en forme systématique. Cela justifie amplement le projet d'une reconstitution de son architecture d'ensemble. (shrink)

"Ancient philosophers were very interested in the themes of laughter, humor and comedy. They theorized about laughter and its causes, moralized about the appropriate uses of humor and what it is appropriate to laugh at, and wrote treaties on comedic composition. Further, they were often merciless in ridiculing their opponents' positions, often borrowing comedic devices and techniques from comic poetry and drama to do so. The volume is organized around three themes that were important for ancient philosophers: the psychology of (...) laughter, the ethical and social norms governing laughter and humor. and the philosophical uses of humor and comedic technique"--. (shrink)

Library of Living Philosophers volume on Hilary Putnam with critical essays, Putnam's autobiography and his replies.

In this paper, the “self” is understood in broad terms as one’s character and personality, based on Christopher Gill’s notion of the self in Hellenistic and imperial philosophy. Moreover, my use of “self-fashioning” —that is, one’s creation of an image of oneself—in ancient Christianity, is built on the work of Carol Newsom and Eve-Marie Becker. The latter focusses on Paul, who is Origen’s hero and may even have inspired Origen’s own strategies of self-fashioning as an inspired preacher of Christ, an (...) apostle, unjustly humiliated (and supporter of apokatastasis or universal restoration): all characteristics that Origen shared and emphasized in his self-fashioning, as will be clarified below. I draw attention to a neglected aspect of Origen’s self-fashioning, namely, its intricate connection to polemical self-positioning within society. In other words, Origen seems to define himself by reference to other Christian groups rather than positing an inner Self that is independent from society. I explore the reciprocal relationship between his polemics against others and the construction of his Self-image, suggesting that one emerged from the other. To highlight the social construction of Origen’s ‘self,’ I conclude by examining briefly how his self-fashioning influenced his subsequent readers. In his lifetime, Origen was ‘the leading intellectual of the age,’ ‘the greatest scholar and theologian of the ancient church,’ and the founder ‘of philosophical theology.’ Additionally, no Christian thinker ‘is so invisibly all-present as Origen’ in later Christian thought and exegesis. Origen’s footprint in Platonism, as well, is likely more salient than often assumed, for example with respect to the notion of hypostasis as individual substance, first bodies, and apokatastasis. Thus, a reassessment of his thought permits us to revisit patristic philosophical theology and exegesis, as well as ancient philosophy. Yet, Origen seems to have spoken very little of himself; he was more typically spoken of—frequently in superlatives at both extremes. Most importantly, his presence is palpable in subsequent exegesis, theology, philosophical theology, and even ‘pagan’ philosophy. Unlike Augustine, Origen did not leave us an autobiography. This confessional reticence, which emerges time and again, might be taken as a sign of his humility—but mostly only seemingly. As we shall see, it is possible to identify many, mostly indirect, references to himself and his work in his extant oeuvre. -/- . (shrink)