Emergence of the novel pathogenic coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2 and its rapid pandemic spread presents challenges that demand immediate attention. Here, we describe the development of a semi‐quantitative high‐content microscopy‐based assay for detection of three major classes (IgG, IgA, and IgM) of SARS‐CoV‐2 specific antibodies in human samples. The possibility to detect antibodies against the entire viral proteome together with a robust semi‐automated image analysis workflow resulted in specific, sensitive and unbiased assay that complements the portfolio of SARS‐CoV‐2 serological assays. Sensitive, specific (...) and quantitative serological assays are urgently needed for a better understanding of humoral immune response against the virus as a basis for developing public health strategies to control viral spread. The procedure described here has been used for clinical studies and provides a general framework for the application of quantitative high‐throughput microscopy to rapidly develop serological assays for emerging virus infections. (shrink)

This is a collective study of philosophical questions to do with experts and expertise, such as: What is an expert? Who decides who the experts are? Should we always defer to experts? How should expertise inform public policy? What happens when the experts disagree? Must experts be unbiased? Does it matter what the source of the expertise is?

This paper offers a novel interpretation of Hans Jonas’ analysis of metabolism, the centrepiece of Jonas’ philosophy of organism, in relation to recent controversies regarding the phenomenological dimension of life-mind continuity as understood within ‘autopoietic’ enactivism (AE). Jonas’ philosophy of organism chiefly inspired AE’s development of what we might call ‘the phenomenological life-mind continuity thesis’ (PLMCT), the claim that certain phenomenological features of human experience are central to a proper scientific understanding of both life and mind, and as such central (...) features of all living organisms. After discussing the understanding of PLMCT within AE, and recent criticisms thereof, I develop a reading of Jonas’ analysis of metabolism, in light of previous commentators, which emphasizes its systematicity and transcendental flavour. The central thought is that, for Jonas, the attribution of certain phenomenological features is a necessary precondition for our understanding of the possibility of metabolism, rather than being derivable from metabolism itself. I argue that my interpretation strengthens Jonas’ contribution to AE’s justification for ascribing certain phenomenological features to life across the board. However, it also emphasises the need to complement Jonas’ analysis with an explanatory account of organic identity in order to vindicate these phenomenological ascriptions in a scientific context. (shrink)

In this paper I will examine what Blaise Pascal means by “infinite distance”, both in his works on projective geometry and in the apologetics of the Pensées’s. I suggest that there is a difference of meaning in these two uses of “infinite distance”, and that the Pensées’s use of it also bears relations to the mathematical concept of heterogeneity. I also consider the relation between the finite and the infinite and the acceptance of paradoxical relations by Pascal.

Tanto nos Pensamentos quanto em seus trabalhos matemáticos, Pascal faz referência ao “nada”, assim como a um processo que poderíamos chamar de “aniquilamento”, segundo o qual aquilo que é finito se torna um nada diante do infinito. O “nada” pascaliano, segundo a interpretação aqui defendida, pode ter, em diferentes passagens da obra do autor, uma acepção relativa ou uma acepção absoluta, o que vale também para os termos de “infinito”, “desproporção” e “indivisível” na obra de Pascal. Além do valor de (...) tal análise para os Pensamentos, ela se propõe mostrar certa proximidade estrutural entre as obras matemáticas e apologéticas de Pascal. (shrink)

This volume provides a rigorous philosophical investigation of the rationales, challenges, and promises of the coming Space Age. Over the past decade, space exploration has made significant and accelerating progress, and its potential has attracted growing attention from science, states, businesses, innovators, as well as the media and society more generally. However, philosophical theorizing concerning the premises, values, meanings, and impacts of space exploration is still in its infancy, and this potentially immense field of study is far from mainstream yet. (...) This book advances outer space philosophy by integrating key scientific and societal debates sparked by recent developments in space research and activities with conceptual, existential, ethical, aesthetic, and political themes and concerns. It maps various regions of philosophical exploration, reflection, and speculation regarding humanity's present and future irradiation into outer space, to promote a broad, rich, and nuanced societal debate regarding this transformative enterprise, which is as stimulating as it can be disorienting. This book will be a fascinating philosophical and ethical exploration for academics, researchers and students interested in philosophy, space studies, science and technology studies, future studies, and sustainability. (shrink)

This chapter discusses problems as they arise in Minima Moralia, respectively addressing the question of truth and knowledge as a function of the accessibility of language and the question of transparency in relation to the formulation of these problems. One of the most important meditations on reading and transparency in Minima Moralia is found in the section “Memento” [“Hinter den Spiegel”]. This thought-image takes us to the far side of mimetic perception and reflection, behind the mirror, offering what might be (...) a new way of thinking transparency. Once arrived, however, we do not stay there, as indicated by the accusative article den; we are to remain in motion, following the movement of language as it passes through and bears the traces of a complex web of social relations and aesthetic conventions. Here Theodor W. Adorno reflects on illuminating writing not in terms of its clarity, but rather its porous, material nature. (shrink)

In many ways, questionable epidemiological measures by which the authorities restricted civic and private life during the COVID-19 pandemic have challenged many implied notions of the inviolability of citizens’ rights and freedoms, as well as obedience to state authority. It is a problem of the incommensurability between freedom and law seen through the conflict between personal rights and the demands of the common good. This article examines how a state of emergency, such as a pandemic, affects the perception of the (...) legitimacy of the State. In this, it relies on some key concepts from Carl Schmitt’s political theology, such as the “exception”, “the sociology of legal concepts”, the “nature of sovereignty”, the formal criterion of the political as a specific way of thinking, and acting and “stasiological” nature of the political. (shrink)

We begin by introducing our readers to the Extended Mind Thesis and briefly discuss a series of arguments in its favour. We continue by showing of such a theory can be resisted and go on to demonstrate that a more conservative account of cognition can be developed. We acknowledge a stalemate between these two different accounts of cognition and notice a couple of issues that we argue have prevented further progress in the field. To overcome the stalemate, we propose to (...) focus on the ethical implications of these theories. We link work conducted on the Extended Mind Thesis with contemporary transhumanist research and claim that extended may be ethically preferred over embedded because it is a more progressive and inclusive theory. (shrink)

Drawing upon the philosophical insights of Friedrich Schlegel, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and Blixa Bargeld, this book explores the persistence of a critical-deconstructive approach to musical production, consumption, and reception in the German cultural sphere of the last two centuries.

Demokratische Institutionen und rechtliche Regulierungsmechanismen wandeln sich grundlegend. Dieser Wandel ist Tendenzen der Metamorphose von Recht und Politik ausgesetzt: Tendenzen, von denen vorerst nur klar ist, dass sie erfolgen, nicht, in welchem Umfang und in welchen Formen. Um Klarheit uber diese Tendenzen gewinnen zu konnen, ist es erforderlich, erneut daruber nachzudenken, wie Politik, Verantwortung, Freiheit und Recht ins Verhaltnis zu setzen sind. Auf die dem Band vorangestellte Frage, ob es eine Freiheit ohne Recht gibt, finden sich in den Beitragen der (...) Autoren unterschiedliche Antworten.". (shrink)

ExcerptIn a letter to his friend and intellectual collaborator Theodor W. Adorno, on December 25, 1935, Walter Benjamin describes music as a field of inquiry “fairly remote” from his own.1 Several years later, in another letter to Max Horkheimer, he writes that the “state of musical affairs … could not be any more remote” for him.2 Yet despite these claims of unfamiliarity with aurality, there are numerous observations on acoustic phenomena throughout Benjamin's oeuvre. From his early essays on language to (...) his autobiographical studies and late works on critical historiography, Benjamin displays a keen sensitivity to sound that ranges from…. (shrink)

This paper proposes substitutional definitions of logical truth and consequence in terms of relative interpretations that are extensionally equivalent to the model-theoretic definitions for any relational first-order language. Our philosophical motivation to consider substitutional definitions is based on the hope to simplify the meta-theory of logical consequence. We discuss to what extent our definitions can contribute to that.

Práce, která uvádí do živé problematiky vědecké estetiky, řeší v první části problémy a úkoly estetiky, obrací se k jejímu předmětu, ke krásnu a umění, obírá se významem signální teorie pro estetiku, poměrem člověka k obrazu astavbě i pokrokem v hudbě a umění vůbec. Do druhé části jsou zařazeny vybrané kapitoly jednak z dějin řecké, jednak z české estetiky.

ZusammenfassungIn diesem Aufsatz wird eine kommunikations- und medientheoretische Untersuchung ausgewählter Divinationspraktiken unternommen. Im Zentrum stehen hierbei das Giftorakel der zentralafrikanischen Zande sowie die arabisch-islamische Geomantie. Dieses Unternehmen hat den Zweck, drei Thesen bezüglich Medien religiöser Kommunikation zu erproben, die sich dem Autor aus der Auseinandersetzung mit Ritualen und speziell Divinationsformen aus unterschiedlichen soziokulturellen Kontexten ergeben haben:1) Divinationsmedien unterscheiden sich in frappierender Weise von Medien der Alltagskommunikation; 2) diese besonderen Medien ermöglichen eine Kommunikation zwischen Wirklichkeitsbereichen und verkörpern damit ein fundamentales „Dazwischen“; (...) 3) von einer Innenperspektive betrachtet, werden Divinationsmedien oft als aktive Kommunikationspartner konzipiert und wahrgenommen – selbst wenn diese aus einer Beobachterperspektive unbelebte Paraphernalia sind.Um eine Grundlage für die Plausibilisierung dieser Thesen zu schaffen, ist anfänglich von Kommunikation und Medien sowie den Besonderheiten religiöser Kommunikation und Medien religiöser Kommunikation die Rede. Auf die detaillierte Beschreibung der Divinationspraktiken folgen ihre kommunikationstheoretische Analyse sowie eine zeichen- und medientheoretische Deutung dieser Ergebnisse.Das Ziel dieses Aufsatzes liegt neben der Plausibilisierung seiner Thesen auch darin, Impulse für die religionswissenschaftliche Debatte um Medien, Materialität und Performanz zu liefern. Gerade in den Ergebnissen der Divinationsforschung sieht David Morgan, wie er jüngst in Material religion schrieb, ein ertragreiches Feld. (shrink)

Several language experiments have been carried out on apes and other animals aiming to narrow down the presumed qualitative gap that separates humans from other animals. These experiments, however, have been driven by the understanding of language as a purely symbolic sign system, often connected to a profound disinterest for language use in real situations and a propensity to perceive grammatical and syntactic information as the only fundamental aspects of human language. For these reasons, the language taught to apes tends (...) to discard iconic and indexical elements in favour of symbolic signs. This paper sheds light on the iconic components of human language, with close attention to the iconic properties of language as present in the ape language experiments. We emphasise the role of the body in the interpretation and production of iconic signs, while demonstrating the need to take into account the Umwelt theory in the research paradigm of the experiments. Uexküll’s Umwelt theory is used to exemplify the methodological problems connected to the teaching of human language to other animal species; furthermore, we discuss how the modelling capacities of language affect the biological layer that constitutes the animal Umwelt. Language is analysed as a particular case of Umwelt transition, and as such its implications are further discussed in the article. With this paper, we enrich the discussion surrounding the human-ape pidgin language by advocating for the need to include iconic components as vital parts of this research area. With this inclusion, we uncover the inter-dependency of iconic, indexical and symbolic signs in human language, aiming to further develop the research paradigm of the ape language experiments. (shrink)

The discourse on the fundamental issues raised by synthetic biology, such as biosafety and biosecurity, intellectual property, environmental consequences and ethical and societal implications, is still open and controversial. This, coupled with the potential and risks the field holds, makes it one of the hottest topics in technology assessment today. How a new technology is perceived by the public influences the manner in which its products and applications will be received. Therefore, it is important to learn how people perceive synthetic (...) biology. This work gathers, integrates and discusses the results of three studies of public perceptions of synthetic biology: an analysis of existing research on how media portray synthetic biology across 13 European countries and in the USA, the Meeting of Young Minds, a public debate between prospective politicians and synthetic biologists in the Netherlands and the experiences of citizen panels and focus groups in Austria, the UK and the USA. The results show that the media are generally positive in their reports on synthetic biology, rather unbalanced in their view of potential benefits and risks, and also heavily influenced by the sources of the stories, namely scientists and stakeholders. Among the prospective Dutch politicians, there were positive expectations as well as very negative ones. Some of these positions are also shared by participants in public dialogue experiments, such as not only the demand for information, transparency and regulation but also a sense of resignation and ineluctability of scientific and technological progress. (shrink)

Usporednom analizom odabranih povijesnih i suvremenih pedagoških dokumenata stručno usavršavanje se prepoznaje kao trajna i neodvojiva komponenta nastavničke profesije. Trajno usavršavanje odgojnoobrazovnih djelatnika nepravedno se pripisuje tek vremenu paradigme cjeloživotnog obrazovanja. Pedagoški teoretičari nastavničkoj profesiji od njezinih početaka i pokušaja zakonske regulative te njezina društvenog etabliranja propisuju trajnu potrebu stručnog usavršavanja u svrhu profesionalnog razvitka i karijernog napredovanja, kao i obvezu neprestanog učenja. Već u prvom zakonskom dokumentu iz 1874. godine propisano je individualno i produžno obrazovanje svih učitelja. Time stručno (...) usavršavanje postaje ključna sastavnica učiteljske profesije, a kasnije i svih odgojno obrazovnih djelatnika. Analizom povijesnih dokumenata utvrđena je sto pedeset godišnja zakonska i propisima regulirana trajna obveza stručnog usavršavanja nastavnika koja u praksi često nije ostvarena. Nakon dosegnute sveučilišne razine inicijalnog obrazovanja svih nastavnika i učitelja, potrebno je stvoriti uvjete za njihovo sustavno i učinkovito stručno usavršavanje. By comparative analysis of selected historical and contemporary pedagogical documents, professional development is recognized as a permanent and inseparable component of the teaching profession. Continuous training of educators is unfairly attributed only to the time of the lifelong education paradigm. Since its beginnings and attempts at legislation and its social establishment, pedagogical theorists have prescribed the continuing need for professional development for the purpose of professional development and career advancement, as well as the obligation of continuous learning. Already in the first legal document of 1874, individual and extended education of all teachers was prescribed. In this way, professional development becomes a key component of the teaching profession and later of all educational staff. The analysis of historical documents has determined the one hundred and fifty-year legal and statutory regulation of a permanent obligation for the professional development of teachers, which is often not achieved in practice. After reaching the university level of initial education of all teachers, it is necessary to create the conditions for their systematic and effective professional development. (shrink)

By comparative analysis of selected historical and contemporary pedagogical documents, professional development is recognized as a permanent and inseparable component of the teaching profession. Continuous training of educators is unfairly attributed only to the time of the lifelong education paradigm. Since its beginnings and attempts at legislation and its social establishment, pedagogical theorists have prescribed the continuing need for professional development for the purpose of professional development and career advancement, as well as the obligation of continuous learning. Already in the (...) first legal document of 1874, individual and extended education of all teachers was prescribed. In this way, professional development becomes a key component of the teaching profession and later of all educational staff. The analysis of historical documents has determined the one hundred and fifty-year legal and statutory regulation of a permanent obligation for the professional development of teachers, which is often not achieved in practice. After reaching the university level of initial education of all teachers, it is necessary to create the conditions for their systematic and effective professional development. (shrink)

We show that there is no non-constant assignment of zeros and ones to points of a unit sphere in R3\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbb{R}^3$$\end{document} such that for every three pairwisely orthogonal vectors, an odd number of them is assigned 1. This is a new strengthening of the Bell–Kochen–Specker theorem, which proves the non-existence of hidden variables in quantum theories.

This essay discusses notions of community, commoning, and assemblage, in conjunction with new materialist and posthumanist onto-epistemologies and ethico-politics. The analysis is situated within, and applied to, current debates in ecological and community-oriented art, curating, and activism. The essay concludes with an articulation of what a “community of material-discursive commoning” may be constituted by, through, and with.

Advances in artificial intelligence and robotics stand to change many aspects of our lives, including our values. If trends continue as expected, many industries will undergo automation in the near future, calling into question whether we can still value the sense of identity and security our occupations once provided us with. Likewise, the advent of social robots driven by AI, appears to be shifting the meaning of numerous, long-standing values associated with interpersonal relationships, like friendship. Furthermore, powerful actors’ and institutions’ (...) increasing reliance on AI to make decisions that may affect how people live their lives may have a significant impact on privacy while also raising issues about algorithmic transparency and human control. In this paper, building and expanding on previous works, we will look at how the deployment of Artificial Intelligence technology may lead to changes in identity, security, and other crucial values. We will discuss what challenges we may face in the process, while critically reflecting on whether such changes may be desirable. Finally, drawing on a series of considerations underlying virtue ethics, we will formulate a set of preliminary suggestions, which—we hope—can be used to more carefully guide the future roll out of AI technologies for human flourishing; that is, for social and moral good. (shrink)

Argues that there are moral grounds to use torture where the lives of the innocent are at stake.

Block (Trends Cogn Sci 7:285–286, 2003) and Prinz (PSYCHE 12:1–19, 2006) have defended the idea that SSD perception remains in the substituting modality (auditory or tactile). Hurley and Noë (Biol Philos 18:131–168, 2003) instead argued that after substantial training with the device, the perceptual experience that the SSD user enjoys undergoes a change, switching from tactile/auditory to visual. This debate has unfolded in something like a stalemate where, I will argue, it has become difficult to determine whether the perception acquired (...) through the coupling with an SSD remains in the substituting or the substituted modality. Within this puzzling deadlock two new approaches have been recently suggested. Ward and Meijer (Conscious Cogn 19:492–500, 2010) describe SSD perception as visual-like but characterize it as a kind of artificially induced synaesthesia. Auvray et al. (Perception 36:416–430, 2007) and Auvray and Myin (Cogn Sci 33:1036–1058, 2009) suggest that SSDs let their users experience a new kind of perception. Deroy and Auvray (forthcoming) refine this position, and argue that this new kind of perception depends on pre-existing senses without entirely aligning with any of them. So, they have talked about perceptual experience in SSDs as going "beyond vision". In a similar vein, MacPherson (Oxford University Press, New York, 2011a) claims that “if the subjects (SSD users) have experiences with both vision-like and touch-like representational characteristics then perhaps they have a sense that ordinary humans do not” (MacPherson in Oxford University Press, New York, 2011a, p. 139). (shrink)

BackgroundAlthough some of the most radical hypothesis related to the practical implementations of human enhancement have yet to become even close to reality, the use of cognitive enhancers is a very tangible phenomenon occurring with increasing popularity in university campuses as well as in other contexts. It is now well documented that the use of cognitive enhancers is not only increasingly common in Western countries, but also gradually accepted as a normal procedure by the media as well. In fact, its (...) implementation is not unusual in various professional contexts and it has its peak in colleges. Even when certain restrictions in the legislation of a country are indeed in place, they are without doubts easy to overcome. The legitimacy and appropriateness of such restrictions will not be the focus of our investigation.DiscussionOur concern is instead related to the moral and social reasons to publicly acknowledge the use of cognitive enhancers in competitive-selective contexts. These reasons are linked to a more neutral analysis of contemporary Western society: it is a fact that an increasing number of competitive-selective contexts have a substantial number of contenders using cognitive enhancers.SummaryThrough the use of five explicative examples, in this paper we want to analyse the problems related to its use. In particular, it will be our aim to show the tension between one of the main argument used by bio-liberals and the actual implementation of the drugs in competitive, or semi-competitive contexts. (shrink)

Emotion recognition skills and the ability to understand the mental states of others are crucial for normal social functioning. Conversely, delays and impairments in these processes can have a profound impact on capability to engage in, maintain, and effectively regulate social interactions. Therefore, this study aimed to compare the performance of 42 autistic children, 45 unaffected siblings, and 41 typically developing controls on the Affect Recognition and Theory of Mind subtests of the Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment Battery. There were no significant (...) differences between siblings and TD controls. Autistic children showed significantly poorer performance on AR when compared to TD controls and on TOM when compared to both TD controls and unaffected siblings. An additional comparison of ASD, unaffected sibling and TD control subsamples, matched on full-scale IQ, revealed no group differences for either AR or TOM. AR and TOM processes have received less research attention in siblings of autistic children and remain less well characterized. Therefore, despite limitations, findings reported here contribute to our growing understanding of AR and TOM abilities in siblings of autistic children and highlight important future research directions. (shrink)

The arguments offered by Jaswal & Akhtar to counter the social motivation theory do not appear to be directly related to the SMT tenets and predictions, seem to not be empirically testable, and are inconsistent with empirical evidence. To evaluate the merits and shortcomings of the SMT and identify scientifically testable alternatives, advances are needed on the conceptualization and operationalization of social motivation across diagnostic boundaries.

Antibiotic resistance (AR) is a major threat to public health and healthcare worldwide. In this article, we analyse and discuss the claim that taking actions to minimize AR is everyone's responsibility, focusing on individual moral responsibility. This should not be merely interpreted as a function of knowledge of AR and the proper use of antibiotics. Instead, we suggest a circumstantial account of individual responsibility for AR, where individuals do or do not engage in judicious antibiotic behaviour with different degrees of (...) voluntariness. Furthermore, we suggest a notion of responsibility as a virtue, in which individuals have the opportunity to develop a sensitivity towards the AR theme and, consequently, are capable of engaging, actively and voluntarily, in judicious antibiotic behaviour. The development of such sensitivity depends on the creation of adequate circumstances, that is individual capacities and availability of resources. (shrink)

Many governments have seen digital health technologies as promising tools to tackle the current COVID-19 pandemic. A much-talked example in this context involves the recent deluge of digital contact tracing apps aimed at detecting Covid-19 exposure. In this short contribution we look at the bio-political justification of this phenomenon and reflect on whether DCT apps constitute, as it is often argued, a serious potential breach of our right to privacy. Despite praising efforts attempting to develop legal and ethical frameworks for (...) DCT apps’ usage; we argue that such endeavours are not sufficient to tackle the more fundamental problem of mass surveillance, which will remain largely unaddressed unless we deal with the biopolitical arguments presented and resort to a technical and structural defence. (shrink)

The quarantine model, recently proposed by Pereboom and Caruso, is one of the most influential models developed to date in the context of criminal justice. The quarantine model challenges the very idea of criminal punishment and asserts that nobody deserves punishment on a fundamental level. Instead, in order to deal with offenders, it proposes a series of incapacitation measures based on public safety concerns. In this article, we examine several objections to the quarantine model that demonstrate how, in our view, (...) it can be improved. These mainly pertain to (2.1) the difficulty of reliably identifying dangerous individuals and consequently the need to base confinement decisions on probability, and (2.2) the potential for the quarantine model not to properly deter certain crimes. Three additional objections are raised with respect to (3.1) the rights that are potentially suppressed in the quarantine model; (3.2) the role of “genetic justice”; and (3.3) the difficulty it faces accommodating reasons-responsiveness. Whereas these objections do not constitute knock-down arguments against the quarantine model, they highlight issues that invite closer scrutiny, at least if it is to be considered as a credible framework for the development of viable policies in criminal justice. (shrink)

In Section 1, I introduce three views that explain human cognitive development from different standpoints: Marcus’s neo-nativism, standard neuroconstructivism, and neo-neuroconstructivism. In Section 2, I assess Marcus’s attempt to reconcile nativism with developmental flexibility. In Section 3, I argue that in structurally reconfiguring nativism, Marcus ends up transforming it into an unrecognizable form, and I claim that his view could be accommodated within the more general framework provided by standard neuroconstructivism. In Section 4, I focus on recent empirical findings in (...) neuropsychology and cultural/social neuroscience, and propose a friendly revision to standard neuroconstructivism, thus developing the neo-neuroconstructivist view. I conclude the article in Section 5 by analysing the implications of the results discussed in Section 4 for both neo-nativism and standard neuroconstructivism. 1 Introduction2 Marcus’s Neo-nativism3 Is Marcus’s Neo-nativism Really a Form of Nativism?4 Neo-neuroconstructivism and Dynamic Enskillment5 Conclusion. (shrink)

En el trabajo se expondrá la teoría de la oración predicativa simple en Aristóteles conforme a su tratado De Interpretatione. Se prestará especial atención a las tesis planteadas por el autor en dicha obra y que presentan algún conflicto con tesis planteadas por autores contemporáneos tales como Frege, Husserl, Heidegger, Tugendhat, Austin y Searle.

In the fifth centuryb.c.e.the Athenians did not make any distinction between laws and decrees. The Assembly passed both kinds of measures in the same way, and both general enactments and short-term provisions held the same legal status. At the end of the fifth century, however, the Athenians decided to make a distinction between the two kinds of measures and created the rule that no decree would be superior to a law. The Assembly continued to pass decrees in the same way, (...) but a new body ofnomothetaiwas created to ratify laws. There were also two separate procedures for rescinding the two kinds of measures: one could bring agraphê paranomôn against apsêphismaand agraphê ‘nomon mê epitêdeion theinai’ against anomos. This much is clear; scholars do not agree however about the procedure for passing a new law in fourth-century Athens. (shrink)