Originally published in 1937 on the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of the birth of Isaac ben Judah Abravanel, this book contains six essays on his teaching and thought by a number of scholars. The authors explain key points such as the Iberian background to Abravanel's work, his differences with other philosophers of his age, and the influence of his son, Leone Ebreo, on the Renaissance. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Abravanel's life (...) and teaching or in Medieval Jewish philosophy. (shrink)

kerekh 1. Haḳdamot. Peraḳim 1-2 -- kerekh 3. Pereḳ 3 -- kerekh 4. Pereḳ 4 -- kerekh 5. Pereḳ 5 -- kerekh 6. Pereḳ 6. Mafteaḥ meḳorot -- kerekh 7. Mafteaḥ ʻarakhim.

There are many ways of interpreting the so-called new technologies. One of the most interesting is that which stems from defining them as a social imaginary, and therefore, as collective beliefs, fears and hopes. It is common to attribute to technologies all manner of threats that, founded or not, are real in the measure that the society makes decisions and acts in a way consistent with this conviction.The fears and anxieties of society lead to a consideration of the limits of (...) the human that technologies transgress. Among the figures with which one speaks about these limits there is Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus, which threatens modern fantasies with its deformity. There is, however, another man-made creature that can serve to orient our reflection, the Golem.In 1609, 400 years ago, Rabbi Loew died. He is credited with the creation of a homunculus by combining of secret codes. The problem of the Golem was its imperfect soul made manifest in its lack of speech. Its silent presence was a source of great fear in the community that finally asked to get rid of the creature.These figures of monstrosity, Frankenstein and above all Golem, will help us to make technologies understand from the fear that society projects onto them, and this will lead us to the question concerning the imaginary fears of the technological system. (shrink)

Humean Supervenience is a metaphysical model of the world according to which all truths hold in virtue of nothing but the total spatiotemporal distribution of perfectly natural, intrinsic properties. David Lewis and others have worked out many aspects of HS in great detail. A larger motivational question, however, remains unanswered: As Lewis admits, there is strong evidence from fundamental physics that HS is false. What then is the purpose of defending HS? In this paper, we argue that the philosophical merit (...) of HS is largely independent of whether it correctly represents the world’s fundamental structure. In particular, we show that insofar as HS is an apt model of the world’s higher-level structure, it thereby provides a powerful argument for reductive physicalism and explains otherwise opaque inferential relations. Recent criticism of HS on the grounds that it misrepresents fundamental physical reality is, therefore, beside the point. (shrink)

Cet article présente une analyse de l’interprétation de la définition aristotélicienne du mouvement dans Physique III. 1 (201a10-11) par Thomas d’Aquin, notamment en avançant deux thèses. Premièrement, Thomas comprend le mouvement comme une actualisation de la potentialité d’être mu. Deuxièmement, nous montrons que d’après Thomas le mouvement est une entité semi-réelle, dans la mesure où le processus du mouvement est dans l’esprit de celui qui perçoit. Ces thèses nous mènent à conclure que Thomas d’Aquin ne reprend pas simplement la définition (...) aristotélicienne du mouvement, mais qu’il la transforme. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the Consequence Argument relies on empirical premises. In particular, we show how the argument depends upon assumptions about the character of the laws of nature.

Humean reductionism about laws of nature appears to leave a central aspect of scientific practice unmotivated: If the world’s fundamental structure is exhausted by the actual distribution of non-modal properties and the laws of nature are merely efficient summaries of this distribution, then why does science posit laws that cover a wide range of non-actual circumstances? In this paper, we develop a new version of the Humean best systems account of laws based on the idea that laws need to organize (...) information in a way that maximizes their cognitive usefulness for creature like us. We argue that this account motivates scientific practice because the laws’ applicability to non-actual circumstances falls right out of their cognitive usefulness. (shrink)

This article aims to read feminist new materialisms (Barad), together with ‘postulated’ linguistic or cultural primacy of Queer Theory (Butler), to show how both are engaged in similar critical-ethical endeavours. The central argument is that the criticism of Barad and new materialisms misses Butler’s materialistic insights due to a narrow interpretation of Butler's alleged social-constructivist position. There is, therefore, a specific focus on where they both make similar ethical appeals. Moreover, the article relies on Adorno's negative dialectic to highlight an (...) interpretation of Barad and Butler as being part of the same dialectical movement, in which materialism and idealism fluctuate in their mutual criticisms, thus continuing the procession towards 'new knowledge' and emancipation, or freedom, through their motions back and forth. (shrink)

Humean Laws for Human Agents presents cutting-edge research by leading experts on the Humean account of laws, chance, possibility, and necessity. A central question in metaphysics and philosophy of science is: What are laws of nature? Humeans hold that laws are not sui generis metaphysical entities but merely particularly effective summaries of what actually happens. The most discussed recent work on Humeanism emphasizes the laws' usefulness for limited agents and uses pragmatic considerations to address fundamental and long-standing problems. The current (...) volume develops and critically examines pragmatic Humean accounts, with innovative new work on the epistemology of laws and chance, the problem of induction, counterfactuals, special science laws, and a Humean account of essence. Taken together, the papers provide a roadmap for developing pragmatic Humeanism and connate views, setting the agenda for future research. (shrink)

In the framework of the rigged Hilbert space, unstable quantum systems associated with first-order poles of the analytically continued S-matrix can be described by Gamow vectors which are generalized vectors with exponential decay and a Breit-Wigner energy distribution. This mathematical formalism can be generalized to quasistationary systems associated with higher-order poles of the S-matrix, which leads to a set of Gamow vectors of higher order with a non-exponential time evolution. One can define a state operator from the set of higher-order (...) Gamow vectors which obeys the exponential decay law. We shall discuss to what extent the requirement of an exponential time evolution determines the form of the state operator for a quasistationary microphysical system associated with a higher-order pole of the S-matrix. (shrink)

Humean reductionism about laws of nature is the view that the laws reduce to the total distribution of non-modal or categorical properties in spacetime. A worry about Humean reductionism is that it cannot motivate the characteristic modal resilience of laws under counterfactual suppositions and that it thus generates wrong verdicts about certain nested counterfactuals. In this paper, we defend Humean reductionism by motivating an account of the modal resilience of Humean laws that gets nested counterfactuals right.

Our ordinary causal concept seems to fit poorly with how our best physics describes the world. We think of causation as a time-asymmetric dependence relation between relatively local events. Yet fundamental physics describes the world in terms of dynamical laws that are, possible small exceptions aside, time symmetric and that relate global time slices. My goal in this paper is to show why we are successful at using local, time-asymmetric models in causal explanations despite this apparent mismatch with fundamental physics. (...) In particular, I will argue that there is an important connection between time asymmetry and locality, namely: understanding the locality of our causal models is the key to understanding why the physical time asymmetries in our universe give rise to time asymmetry in causal explanation. My theory thus provides a unified account of why causation is local and time asymmetric and thereby enables a reply to Russell’s famous attack on causation. (shrink)

This paper explores the gendered discourses of the – seemingly favourable – media coverage that certain Heads of State received for their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking at media reports published in different English-speaking outlets in the US, the UK, India, Bangladesh, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland, and using multimodal feminist critical discourse analysis, we identify and describe strategies that on the surface appear to challenge hegemonic – and largely masculine – discourses of leadership. Upon closer scrutiny, these (...) superficially complimentary reports rather reinforce and naturalise discriminatory gender ideologies, and, as we demonstrate, they do so to different degrees along a continuum of essentialising, contextualising, and problematising. We critically discuss the discursive and visual processes involved and show that complimenting these leaders on their performance compares them against a masculine norm to construct their leadership as ‘alternative’, exceptional, and hence marked. This gendered portrayal of political leadership in times of crisis illustrates how the discursive construction of identities, responsibilities, and relationships during COVID-19 largely hinges on power relations and political ideologies that systematically disadvantage and undermine women. The purportedly positive form in which this occurs makes it particularly difficult to challenge and subvert these discriminatory discourses and their underlying gendered ideologies. (shrink)

Resumen Este trabajo revisa algunas de las objeciones más frecuentes contra la versión que Nozick ofrece de la estipulación lockeana. Se detiene especialmente en dos de ellas: aquella que afirma que la estipulación es contraproducente y aquella que, por el contrario, sostiene que es insuficiente. Se rechazarán ambas críticas. La primera porque pasa por alto la distinción que Nozick hace entre no disminuir las oportunidades de usar un bien y las oportunidades de apropiárselo; la segunda porque asume erróneamente que la (...) línea de base de la estipulación se encuentra siempre en el estado de naturaleza. Finalmente se ofrece una formulación del principio de justicia en la adquisición que recoge las restricciones de estipulación.This paper reviews some of the most frequent objections against Nozick's version of Lockean Proviso. In particular, it examines two of them: the one that affirms that the stipulation is self-defeating and the one that, on the contrary, maintains that it is insufficient or to weak. Both criticisms are rejected. The first because it ignores Nozick's distinction between not diminishing the opportunities to use a specific good and the opportunities to appropriate it; the second because it erroneously assumes that the baseline of the stipulation is always in the state of nature. Finally, a formulation is offered on the principle of justice in acquisition that includes the stipulation restrictions. (shrink)

Humeans about laws maintain that laws of nature are nothing over and above the complete distribution of non-modal, categorical properties in spacetime. ‘Humean compatibilists’ argue that if Humeanism about laws is true, then agents in a deterministic world can do otherwise than they are lawfully determined to do because of the distinctive nature of Humean laws. More specifically, they reject a central premise of the Consequence argument by maintaining that deterministic laws of nature are ‘up to us’. In this paper, (...) we present a new argument for Humean compatibilism. We argue that Humeans about laws indeed have resources for defending compatibilism that non-Humeans lack. Moreover, we show that utilizing these resources does not lead to objectionable consequences. Humeans about laws should thus embrace Humean compatibilism. (shrink)

An influential version of the Consequence argument, the most famous argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism, goes as follows: For an agent to be able to do otherwise, there has to be a possible world with the same laws and the same past as her actual world in which she does otherwise. However, if the actual world is deterministic, there is no such world. Hence, no agent in a deterministic world can ever do otherwise. In this paper, (...) I discuss a recent version of this argument due to Christopher Franklin: the ‘No Opportunity argument’. I argue that the No Opportunity argument overgeneralizes. If its premises were true, things would be obstacles to doing otherwise that have nothing to do with determinism and that intuitively are not obstacles. (shrink)

The Humean best systems account identifies laws of nature with the regularities in a system of truths that, as a whole, best conforms to scientific standards for theory-choice. A principled problem for the BSA is that it returns the wrong verdicts about laws in cases where multiple systems, containing different regularities, satisfy these standards equally well. This problem affects every version of the BSA because it arises regardless of which standards for theory-choice Humeans adopt. In this paper, we propose a (...) Humean response to the problem. We invoke pragmatic aspects of Humean laws to show that the BSA, despite violating some of our intuitive judgements, can capture everything that is relevant for scientific practice. (shrink)

The development of transplantation technology increasingly places before society a multitude of diverse, complex ethical and legal problems. The subject is the more complex because of the various divergent interests involved. There are the interests of the donor of organs, who has a right to protection of his legal position, and those of the patient in need of an often lifesaving organ. There are also the interests of the donor’s relatives, after his death, and those of the transplantation surgeons. The (...) international dimension of transplantation technology makes the picture even more complicated. Though this article is devoted to the European situation, the problems are similar all over the world. (shrink)

The development of transplantation technology increasingly places before society a multitude of diverse, complex ethical and legal problems. The subject is the more complex because of the various divergent interests involved. There are the interests of the donor of organs, who has a right to protection of his legal position, and those of the patient in need of an often lifesaving organ. There are also the interests of the donor’s relatives, after his death, and those of the transplantation surgeons. The (...) international dimension of transplantation technology makes the picture even more complicated. Though this article is devoted to the European situation, the problems are similar all over the world. (shrink)

It is natural to think of causes as difference-makers. What exact difference causes make, however, is an open question. In this paper, I argue that the right way of understanding difference-making is in terms of causal processes: causes make a difference to a causal process that leads to the effect. I will show that this way of understanding difference-making nicely captures the distinction between causing an outcome and helping determine how the outcome happens and, thus, explains why causation is not (...) transitive. Moreover, the theory handles tricky cases that are problematic for competing accounts of difference-making. (shrink)

The distribution of matter in our universe is strikingly time asymmetric. Most famously, the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that entropy tends to increase toward the future but not toward the past. But what explains this time-asymmetric distribution of matter? In this paper, I explore the idea that time itself has a direction by drawing from recent work on grounding and metaphysical fundamentality. I will argue that positing such a direction of time, in addition to time-asymmetric boundary conditions, enables a (...) better explanation of the thermodynamic asymmetry than is available otherwise. (shrink)

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

The assumption that a system described as ‘Confucianism’ formulated by Dong Zhongshu became accepted as the norm during the Western Han dynasty (202 BCE – 9 CE) is challenged and his supposed authorship of the Chunqiu fanlu examined.

Einfühlung wird ideengeschichtlich an das Konzept der Selbstperfektionierung geknüpft und insofern im Modus der Defizienz verhandelt. Dabei fungieren antike und mittelalterliche Diskurse um Gotteserkenntnis als historisch-konzeptionelle Vorläufer neuzeitlichmoderner Erklärungsfolien zwischenmenschlicher Alterität, mithin als semantische Vorform der zeitgenössischen Einfühlungs-Idee. In diesem Kontext ist eine ethisch-epistemologische Asymmetrie zu konstatieren, die Gott einerseits als den All-Empathischen beschreibt und zugleich die Erkenntnisbemühungen des Menschen als unabgeschlossen und prozessual vorstellt. Einfühlung produziert sich als regulative Idee im doppelten Sinne: Während Gott als empathische Transzendenz erscheint, bedarf (...) es unendlicher Annäherungsbewegungen, damit der Mensch sich in einem Akt transzendenter Empathie in Gott einfühlen kann. Durch die Etablierung dieser Vorstellungsverbindung hat das Innenleben des Anderen eine transzendente Aufladung erfahren. Das Fremdpsychische wurde zum modernen Mysterium. (shrink)

Justicia global; igualitarismo de la suerte; teoría relacional; Impuesto al Privilegio del Derecho de Nacimiento; fronteras abiertas.

Neste texto, investiga-se a extensão diacrônica da comuni- dade moral no âmbito de teorias contratualistas. Para isso, examinam-se críticas à possibilidade lógica de sustentar obrigações em relação a gerações futuras e se abordam modelos argumentativos contratualistas de justificação dessas obrigações que se baseiam no interesse próprio e na imparcialidade. De acordo com essa pesquisa, a melhor defesa dessas obrigações se pode articular recorrendo a esse último tipo de contratualismo.

Plausible assumptions from Cosmology and Statistical Mechanics entail that it is overwhelmingly likely that there will be exact duplicates of us in the distant future long after our deaths. Call such persons “Boltzmann duplicates,” after the great pioneer of Statistical Mechanics. In this paper, I argue that if survival of death is possible at all, then we almost surely will survive our deaths because there almost surely will be Boltzmann duplicates of us in the distant future that stand in appropriate (...) relations to us to guarantee our survival. (shrink)

El artículo defiende la tesis de que el liberalismo igualitario nos lleva a una teoría de justicia global y, como parte de ésta, a un derecho de inmigración. Así, el peso de la prueba contra la justicia global y la inmigración se desplaza hacia aquéllos que las desean limitar. Un argumento corriente es que las obligaciones especiales hacia nuestros conciudadanos tienen prioridad sobre las obligaciones generales de justicia. El artículo examina argumentos particularistas y reduccionistas a favor de estas obligaciones especiales, (...) y sostiene que éstos no justifican la restricción de la justicia hacia nuestros conciudadanos y tampoco la discrecionalidad total de los estados en el control de sus fronteras. (shrink)

A moral Kantian approach can be developed to deal with the nonidentity problem with regard to environmental intergenerationl justice—at least in cases of depletion or risky policy. Being a duty-oriented moral theory, this approach allows both that people coming into existence in a nonidentity situation can be glad to exist while simultaneously taking into account depletion or risky policy, to which their existence is causally related, as possibly being morally wrong because of a violation of moral duties.

A central question in the philosophy of science is: What is a law of nature? Different answers to this question define an important schism: Humeans, in the wake of David Hume, hold that the laws of nature are nothing over and above what actually happens and reject irreducible facts about natural modality (Lewis, 1983, 1994; cf. Miller, 2015). According to Non-Humeans, by contrast, the laws are metaphysically fundamental (Maudlin, 2007) or grounded in primitive modal structures, such as dispositional essences of (...) powerful properties (Bird, 2007), necessitation relations (Armstrong, 1983), or primitive subjunctive facts (Lange, 2009). This volume focuses on recent developments in the discussion of Humeanism, specifically on pragmatic versions of the view that put the needs of limited agents like us front and center. (shrink)

En este artículo investigo si es posible justificar derechos culturales en (a) un marco teórico liberal igualitario que define la métrica en relación con una concepción de bienes básicos y en (b) un marco teórico que se orienta de acuerdo al acceso al bienestar individual. De acuerdo con la tesis de..

En este texto se investigan críticamente intentos de justificación de derechos culturales diferenciados dentro del marco teórico de las teorías igualitarias liberales que definen la justicia de acuerdo a alguna concepción de igualdad de oportunidades. El resultado de esta investigación es que esta justificación no es posible ni dentro de la teoría de Rawls ni dentro de la teoría de Dworkin. En el marco de teorías que se orientan al bienestar, como la de Cohen, es posible realizar esta justificación. Sin (...) embargo, estas teorías no son atractivas desde una perspectiva liberal. Derechos culturales igualitarios se contraponen al objetivo liberal igualitario de ofrecer oportunidades iguales para todos. (shrink)

A certain type of counterfactual is thought to be intimately related to causation, control, and explanation. The time asymmetry of these phenomena therefore plausibly arises from a time asymmetry of counterfactual dependence. But why is counterfactual dependence time asymmetric? The most influential account of the time asymmetry of counterfactual dependence is David Albert’s account, which posits a new, time-asymmetric fundamental physical law, the so-called “past hypothesis.” Albert argues that the time asymmetry of counterfactual dependence arises from holding fixed the past (...) hypothesis when evaluating counterfactuals. In this paper, I argue that Albert’s account misconstrues the time asymmetry of counterfactual dependence. (shrink)

On the basis of Waldron’s supersession thesis, this article discusses the historical injustice argument and contends that in order to evaluate moral claims for restitution of territorial titles it is important to consider the legitimate expectations of citizens that have been formed historically and have been sanctioned by the state through institutional mechanisms of stabilization of expectations. The legitimate expectations of citizens form normative demands that cannot be disregarded when rectifying historical injustices. In his arguments in favour of the supersession (...) thesis, Waldron does not give sufficient attention to the concept of ‘legitimate expectation’, even though the thesis is reinforced by this reference. Unlike exclusively restitutive and rectificatory measures, this paper relies on _present considerations_ of the consequences of past injustices, all within the framework of a theory of justice. In this sense, compensation deals with the past, but in a forward-looking way. (shrink)