In contemporary discussions of abortion, both sides argue well-worn positions, particularly concerning the question, When does human life begin? Though often invoked by the Catholic Church for support, Thomas Aquinas in fact held that human life begins after conception, not at the moment of union. But his overall thinking on questions of how humans come into being, and cease to be, is more subtle than either side in this polarized debate imagines. Fabrizio Amerini--an internationally renowned scholar of medieval philosophy--does (...) justice to Aquinas's views on these controversial issues. Some pro-life proponents hold that Aquinas's position is simply due to faulty biological knowledge, and if he knew what we know today about embryology, he would agree that human life begins at conception. Others argue that nothing Aquinas could learn from modern biology would have changed his mind. Amerini follows the twists and turns of Aquinas's thinking to reach a nuanced and detailed solution in the final chapters that will unsettle familiar assumptions and arguments. Systematically examining all the pertinent texts and placing each in historical context, Amerini provides an accurate reconstruction of Aquinas's account of the beginning and end of human life and assesses its bioethical implications for today. This major contribution is available to an English-speaking audience through translation by Mark Henninger, himself a noted scholar of medieval philosophy. (shrink)

I motivate and characterize an intensional semantics for ‘ought’ on which it does not behave as a universal quantifier over possibilities. My motivational argument centers on taking at face value some standard challenges to the quantificational semantics, especially to the idea that ‘ought’-sentences satisfy the principle of Inheritance. I argue that standard pragmatic approaches to these puzzles are either not sufficiently detailed or unconvincing.

A theory of transgenerational justice ought to be grounded on intuitions shared in the human community. One is parental responsibility, postulating duties between the generating and the generated in a realm of proximity. To achieve greater political abstraction, it is necessary to deny self-sufficiency to such primary transgenerational level, arguing for its structural need to rely on external sources distant in space and time. A critical cross-examining of concepts relevant to justify the leap from proximity to distance follows (community and (...) society, equity and equality, singularity and repetition). The outcome is a notion of ius as object of transgenerational quest, including future generations only at the price of avoiding contractualist understandings of bonds between living and non-living entities. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to provide a basis for a systematic development of signaling theory on CSR initiatives. The paper proposes signaling theory as a framework supportive of a strategic CSR approach; maps extant research on signaling through CSR initiatives; offers a comprehensive assessment of the most diffused CSR initiatives and discusses their eligibility as signaling devices; and outlines a research agenda to further develop and test signaling theory in business ethics. Specifically, the study reconsiders some key assumptions, (...) identifies key gaps in empirical validation, and proposes directions to extend multiple signal, signaling pattern, and target cases. (shrink)

This volume brings together eminent theologians, philosophers and political theorists to discuss such questions as how religious understandings have shaped the moral landscape of contemporary culture; the possible contributions of theology and theologically informed moral argument to contemporary public life; the problem of religious and moral discourse in a pluralistic society; and the proper relationship between religion and culture.

An argumentation profile is defined as a methodological instrument for analyzing argumentative discourse considering distinct and interrelated dimensions: the types of argument used, their quality, and the emotions triggered. Walton’s theoretical contributions are developed as a coherent analytical and multifaceted toolbox for capturing these aspects. Argumentation schemes are used to detect and quantify the types of argument. Fallacy analysis and the assessment of the implicit premises retrieved through the schemes allow evaluating arguments. Finally, the frequency of emotive words signals the (...) most common emotions aroused. This method is illustrated through a corpus of argumentative tweets of three politicians. (shrink)

The problem of free will is deeply linked with the causal relevance of mental events. The causal exclusion argument claims that, in order to be causally relevant, mental events must be identical to physical events. However, Gibb has recently criticized it, suggesting that mental events are causally relevant as double preventers. For Gibb, mental events enable physical effects to take place by preventing other mental events from preventing a behaviour to take place. The role of mental double preventers is hence (...) similar to what Libet names free won’t, namely the ability to veto an action initiated unconsciously by the brain. In this paper I will propose an argument against Gibb’s account, the causal irrelevance argument, showing that Gibb’s proposal does not overcome the objection of systematic overdetermination of causal relevance, because mental double preventers systematically overdetermine physical double preventers, and therefore mental events are causally irrelevant. (shrink)

Douglas Walton’s work is extremely vast, multifaceted, and interdisciplinary. He developed theoretical proposals that have been used in disciplines that are not traditionally related to philosophy, such as law, education, discourse analysis, artificial intelligence, or medical communication. Through his papers and books, Walton redefined the boundaries not only of argumentation theory, but also logic and philosophy. He was a philosopher in the sense that his interest was developing theoretical models that can help explain reality, and more importantly interact with it. (...) For this reason, he proposed methods that have been used for analyzing different types of dialogical interactions, and modeling procedures for regulating them. (shrink)

Objective correlates—behavioral, functional, and neural—provide essential tools for the scientific study of consciousness. But reliance on these correlates should not lead to the ‘fallacy of misplaced objectivity’: the assumption that only objective properties should and can be accounted for objectively through science. Instead, what needs to be explained scientifically is what experience is intrinsically— its subjective properties—not just what we can do with it extrinsically. And it must be explained; otherwise the way experience feels would turn out to be magical (...) rather than physical. We argue that it is possible to account for subjective properties objectively once we move beyond cognitive functions and realize what experience is and how it is structured. Drawing on integrated information theory, we show how an objective science of the subjective can account, in strictly physical terms, for both the essential properties of every experience and the specific properties that make particular experiences feel the way they do. (shrink)

So far, legal translation studies have generally been concerned with multilingual legislation, which they have dissected using comparative law methods. The time seems to have come for a differentiated research that recognises various types of legal translation, including the category of translation by professionals for public authorities and business concerns. This latter category’s context is rapidly changing. Globalization is aggravating the crisis of national legislation. First and foremost, networks of authorities have sprung up alongside international organisations. The texts translated are (...) regulatory rather than prescriptive. Then, in the field of international commerce, a standardization of contracts is occurring. Globalized administrative and commercial varieties of English are no longer the English of the common law but, rather, a neutral or hybrid English that needs to be further sub-classified by reference to specific legal sectors. Furthermore, by reducing costs and deadlines, globalization and digitalization have forced translation to be economically efficient. Several legislative provisions now allow the translation of legal texts by way of extracts or summaries. In multilingual monitoring translators are being asked to assess and select the documents for translation themselves. The quality required is often that which is “sufficient” to achieve the sought-after goal. All these changes must be incorporated into the university education of translators. (shrink)

The target article misrepresents the foundations of integrated information theory and ignores many essential publications. It, thus, falls to this lead commentary to outline the axioms and postulates of IIT and correct major misconceptions. The commentary also explains why IIT starts from phenomenology and why it predicts that only select physical substrates can support consciousness. Finally, it highlights that IIT's account of experience – a cause–effect structure quantified by integrated information – has nothing to do with “information transfer.”.

This paper analyzes the rapid and unexpected rise of deep learning within Artificial Intelligence and its applications. It tackles the possible reasons for this remarkable success, providing candidate paths towards a satisfactory explanation of why it works so well, at least in some domains. A historical account is given for the ups and downs, which have characterized neural networks research and its evolution from “shallow” to “deep” learning architectures. A precise account of “success” is given, in order to sieve out (...) aspects pertaining to marketing or sociology of research, and the remaining aspects seem to certify a genuine value of deep learning, calling for explanation. The alleged two main propelling factors for deep learning, namely computing hardware performance and neuroscience findings, are scrutinized, and evaluated as relevant but insufficient for a comprehensive explanation. We review various attempts that have been made to provide mathematical foundations able to justify the efficiency of deep learning, and we deem this is the most promising road to follow, even if the current achievements are too scattered and relevant for very limited classes of deep neural models. The authors’ take is that most of what can explain the very nature of why deep learning works at all and even very well across so many domains of application is still to be understood and further research, which addresses the theoretical foundation of artificial learning, is still very much needed. (shrink)

Sleep and dreaming are important daily phenomena that are receiving growing attention from both the scientific and the philosophical communities. The increasingly popular predictive brain framework within cognitive science aims to give a full account of all aspects of cognition. The aim of this paper is to critically assess the theoretical advantages of Predictive Processing (PP, as proposed by Clark 2013, Clark 2016; and Hohwy 2013) in defining sleep and dreaming. After a brief introduction, we overview the state of the (...) art at the intersection between dream research and PP (with particular reference to Hobson and Friston 2012; Hobson et al. 2014). In the following sections we focus on two theoretically promising aspects of the research program. First, we consider the explanations of phenomenal consciousness during sleep (i.e. dreaming) and how it arises from the neural work of the brain. PP provides a good picture of the peculiarity of dreaming but it can’t fully address the problem of how consciousness comes to be in the first place. We propose that Integrated Information Theory (IIT) (Oizumi et al. 2014; Tononi et al. 2016) is a good candidate for this role and we will show its advantages and points of contact with PP. After introducing IIT, we deal with the evolutionary function of sleeping and dreaming. We illustrate that PP fits with contemporary researches on the important adaptive function of sleep and we discuss why IIT can account for sleep mentation (i.e. dreaming) in evolutionary terms (Albantakis et al. 2014). In the final section, we discuss two future avenues for dream research that can fruitfully adopt the perspective offered by PP: (a) the role of bodily predictions in the constitution of the sleeping brain activity and the dreaming experience, and (b) the precise role of the difference stages of sleep (REM (Rapid eye movement), NREM (Non-rapid eye movement) in the constitution and refinement of the predictive machinery. (shrink)

Raccolta di saggi sulla storia della filosofia rinascimentale e moderna.

Raccolta di saggi sulla storia della filosofia rinascimentale e moderna.

: Autonomous driving systems promise important changes for future of transport, primarily through the reduction of road accidents. However, ethical concerns, in particular, two central issues, will be key to their successful development. First, situations of risk that involve inevitable harm to passengers and/or bystanders, in which some individuals must be sacrificed for the benefit of others. Secondly, and identification responsible parties and liabilities in the event of an accident. Our work addresses the first of these ethical problems. We are (...) interested in investigating how humans respond to critical situations and what reactions they consider to be morally right or at least preferable to others. Our experimental approach relies on the trolley dilemma and knowledge gained from previous research on this. More specifically, our main purpose was to test the difference between what human drivers actually decide to do in an emergency situations whilst driving a realistic simulator and the moral choices they make when they pause to consider what they would do in the same situation and to better understand why these choices may differs. Keywords: Self-driving Cars; Trolley Problem; Moral Choices; Moral Responsibility; Virtual Reality Dilemmi morali nelle automobili a guida autonoma Riassunto: I sistemi di guida autonomi promettono importanti cambiamenti per il futuro dei trasporti, principalmente attraverso la riduzione degli incidenti stradali. Tuttavia, vi sono preoccupazioni etiche, in particolare due questioni centrali, fondamentali per il loro sviluppo. In primo luogo, le situazioni di rischio che comportano inevitabili danni ai passeggeri e/o ai pedoni, ovvero situazioni in cui alcune persone devono essere sacrificate a beneficio di altri. In secondo luogo, l’identificazione delle parti responsabili in caso di incidente. Il nostro lavoro affronta il primo di questi problemi etici. Siamo interessati a studiare come gli umani rispondono a situazioni critiche e quali reazioni considerano moralmente giuste o almeno preferibili. Il nostro approccio sperimentale si basa sul trolley problem e sulle conoscenze acquisite da precedenti ricerche su questo ambito. Più specificamente, il nostro scopo principale è quello di testare la differenza tra ciò che i conducenti umani decidono effettivamente di fare in una situazione di emergenza, mentre guidano un simulatore realistico, e le scelte morali che compiono se posti nella stessa situazione e hanno la possibilità di decidere senza limiti di tempo. Lo scopo è inoltre comprendere come e perché queste scelte possono differire. Parole chiave: Automobili a guida autonoma; Trolley problem; Scelte morali; Responsabilità morale, Realtà virtuale. (shrink)

This book analyzes the uses of emotive language and redefinitions from pragmatic, dialectical, epistemic and rhetorical perspectives, investigating the relationship between emotions, persuasion and meaning, and focusing on the implicit dimension of the use of a word and its dialectical effects. It offers a method for evaluating the persuasive and manipulative uses of emotive language in ordinary and political discourse. Through the analysis of political speeches and legal arguments, the book offers a systematic study of emotive language in argumentation, rhetoric, (...) communication, political science and public speaking. (shrink)

Reason and law before New Sciences -- Dominion, liberty, tutelage : law, ethics and history in De uno -- The "constancy" of the divine and human things -- From Grotius to Vico : the "Natural right of the gentes.".

Argument from analogy is a common and formidable form of reasoning in law and in everyday conversation. Although there is substantial literature on the subject, according to a recent survey ( Juthe 2005) there is little fundamental agreement on what form the argument should take, or on how it should be evaluated. Th e lack of conformity, no doubt, stems from the complexity and multiplicity of forms taken by arguments that fall under the umbrella of analogical reasoning in argumentation, dialectical (...) studies, and law. Modeling arguments with argumentation schemes has proven useful in attempts to refine the analyst’s understanding of not only the logical structures that shape the backbone of the argument itself, but also the logical underpinning of strategies for evaluating it, strategies based on the semantic categories of genus and relevance. By clarifying the distinction between argument from example and argument from analogy, it is possible to advance a useful proposal for the treatment of argument from analogy in law. (shrink)

The analysis of multimodal argumentation in advertising is a crucial and problematic area of research. While its importance is growing in a time characterized by images and pictorial messages, the methods used for interpreting and reconstructing the structure of arguments expressed through verbal and visual means capture only isolated dimensions of this complex phenomenon. This paper intends to propose and illustrate a methodology for the reconstruction and analysis of “double-mode” arguments in advertisements, combining the instruments developed in social semiotics, pragmatics, (...) and argumentation theory. An advertisement is processed through a five-step path. The analysis of its context, text genre, and images leads to a first representation of the messages that it encodes both pictorially and verbally (step 1). These first semantic representations are further enriched by including their polyphonic articulations and presuppositions (step 2), their explicatures (step 3), and their dialogical functions and illocutionary forces (step 4). These pragmatic steps retrieve the commitment structure of the ad, which allows a further argument analysis conducted through argumentation schemes (step 5). (shrink)

This study examines how evidence is used differently in argumentative discourse compared to individual arguments. Applying a 1×2 crossover study design, 37 secondary school students were asked either to discuss a social issue with their partner before individually writing an essay outlining their opinion or, vice versa, first to discuss and then to write. As background information, they were provided with pieces of evidence with different levels of quality. Dialogs and essays were analyzed regarding (a) the type of evidence and (...) (b) the way evidence was used. Results showed that in their essays students referred more often to the pieces of evidence provided to them (shared evidence). In contrast, they used evidence more often to address the opposing viewpoint in dialogs by incorporating it in a more elaborated (clearer) line of reasoning. Findings suggest that dialogues are a more effective tool than individual writing production, and the study provides first hints regarding how to design curricula that will encourage students to use evidence in a more sophisticated way in their argumentation. (shrink)

La "Grande Morale," progettata da J.-P. Sartre tra il 1947 e il 1949 come naturale completamento della filosofia esistenzialista esposta ne L'essere e il nulla e L'esistenzialismo e un umanismo, non e mai stata pubblicata: abbandonata e ripresa piu volte nei successivi vent'anni, ha finito per costituire un serbatoio di annotazioni e di riflessioni sempre dirottate altrove, una specie di fantasma letterario, onnipresente, ma pronto a dileguarsi ogni volta che sembrava avere raggiunto una forma consistente. Sappiamo oggi, grazie alla pubblicazione (...) dei molti inediti sartriani, che la riflessione sulla morale ha accompagnato tutti gli snodi fondamentali del pensiero di Sartre, dai cosiddetti scritti giovanili alle opere della maturita, dalla svolta "dialettica" sino all'ultima discussa intervista, rilasciata poco prima della scomparsa. Gli studi qui riuniti hanno nei Quaderni per una morale (1947-48) il loro centro di gravita e di maggiore interesse. Di questo tentativo abortito di scrivere una "Morale" essi provano a disegnare la parabola, dalle origini remote nei Taccuini della strana guerra (1939) sino al Santo Genet commediante e martire (1952), che ne sancisce l'abbandono. Senza disdegnare qualche incursione nell'estetica sartriana, poiche della "morale introvabile" non c'e in realta testo che non rechi qualche traccia.". (shrink)

The concept of corporate social responsibility has been the subject of several academic contributions, but in the health sector the development of an interest in this subject is very recent. Although many practices in healthcare are already socially responsible, progressing from a series of socially responsible behaviours to a socially responsible organization entails a more consolidated awareness of the health sector’s mission and the needs of its participants. In this paper, we will review the different studies published that address the (...) relationship between the healthcare sector’s corporate responsibility and society, with the aims of individuating the prevailing foci that are emerging and categorizing the proposed contributions according to these foci: social responsibility and organization; social responsibility and social impact; social responsibility and competitiveness. Finally, the paper finishes with a personal definition of CSR and its correlated ethical roots. (shrink)

Statements about the future are central in everyday conversation and reasoning. How should we understand their meaning? The received view among philosophers treats will as a tense: in ‘Cynthia will pass her exam’, will shifts the reference time forward. Linguists, however, have produced substantial evidence for the view that will is a modal, on a par with must and would. The different accounts are designed to satisfy different theoretical constraints, apparently pulling in opposite directions. We show that these constraints are (...) jointly satisfied by a novel modal account of will. On this account, will is a modal but doesn't work as a quantifier over worlds. Rather, the meaning of will involves a selection function similar to the one used by Stalnaker in his semantics for conditionals. The resulting theory yields a plausible semantics and logic for will and vindicates our intuitive views about the attitudes that rational agents should have towards future-directed contents. (shrink)

The aim of the presentation is to focus on the differences between two scientific contexts: the genetic engineering context of the 1970s, with specific attention paid to the use of the recombinant DNA technique to generate genetically modified molecules, and the current genome editing context, with specific attention paid to the use of CRISPR-Cas9 technology to modify human germ line cells genetically. In both events, scientists have been involved in discussions that have gone beyond mere professional deontology touching on specific (...) policy issues such as freedom of research, responsibility for the consequences of research, the right of the public to participate in the evaluation of the goals of research methods, the relationship between cost and benefit and possible social consequences. The comparison between these two scientific contexts suggests the need of handling such issues by defining procedures that meet the criteria of democracy and responsibility towards society. The underlying objective should be to effectively launch actions and interventions based not on a hierarchical approach but rather a reticular conception of knowledge. (shrink)