This essay argues that African palaver ethics makes a vital contribution to the common good tradition in Catholic social ethics. It highlights the significance of solidarity in both Bénézet Bujo’s account of palaver ethics and David Hollenbach’s account of the common good. Yet it concedes that palaver ethics is not perfect as it does not adequately address the missing voices of women. Therefore, it calls for the ethical conversion of the palaver so as to duly recognize the voices of African (...) women and their various contributions to the common good. (shrink)

It has been reported by some studies that the desire to be involved in decisions concerning one’s healthcare especially with regard to obtaining informed consent is related to educational status. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to assess the influence of educational status on attitude towards informed consent practice in three south-eastern Nigerian communities.

Source: Author: Remi Chukwudi Okeke, Sylvia Uchenna Agu Local governments in many parts of Africa are yet to be fully accepted as important levels of government. This gives rise to the contradictory scenario whereby such political actors at the central and sub-central levels remain the apostles of centralization on one hand and exponents of democracy as a model of national government on the other hand. Nigeria is the most populous African country. And this marginalization of the local government in the (...) democratic process is prevalent in Nigeria. Invariably, the pervasive effect of this condition, as it negatively affects the availability of dividends of democracy to the African citizen, is worrisome. In the meantime, the continent of Europe is perceived in the study as having possibly taken local government understanding to a model level of local self-governance, through its European Charter of Local Self-Government. Europe is thus, seen in this study as a region in the lead in situating the local government paradigm, within its proper democratic context. The theoretical framework of deliberative democracy is adopted in the study to engage African states to embrace local self-governance as a critical component of democratization. ]]>. (shrink)

"Le philosophe chilien Javier Agüero Águila a consacré ses recherches à la psychanalyse, à la philosophie française contemporaine - avec une attention toute particulière à la pensée de Jacques Derrida -, à la « philosophie politique » : la violence, la démocratie et les droits de l'homme, l'hospitalité, la communauté et l'extranéité, la marginalité mais encore l'héritage, la mémoire, l'oubli, le pardon, etc. C'est autour du pardon que ce livre s'organise, engageant un débat sur le processus chilien de transition et (...) de démocratisation mis en oeuvre après la dictature militaire de Pinochet" (4ème de couv.). (shrink)

The study investigates how the territorial community can influence the individual and social well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual youth and especially the recognition of their feelings and the construction of their own identity as well as their needs to be socially recognized. This research focuses on the experiences of 30 LGB individuals, with a mean age of 25.07 years, living in urban and rural areas of Southern Italy. Focalized open interviews were conducted, and the Grounded Theory Methodology, supported by the (...) Atlas.ti 8.0 software, was used for data analysis. The textual material was first coded, and then codes were grouped into five macro-categories: Freedom of identity expression in the urban and rural context, identity construction and acceptance process, need of aggregation and identification with the LGB community, role of the interpersonal relationship in the process of identity acceptance, socio-cultural context, and LGB psychological well-being. The results showed a condition common to the two contexts that we can define as “ghettoization.” The young LGB is alone in the rural area due to a lack of places and people to identify with and greater social isolation. On the contrary, although there are more opportunities in the urban area, young people feel stigmatized and ghettoized because “their places” are frequented exclusively by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, queer community. The work will extensively discuss the limitations of the research, future proposals, and the practical implications of the results. (shrink)

Feminists all over the world are united in their contentions on many fronts such as societal norms and conditions that militate against a woman’s expression of her rights and abilities. In as many fronts, they have gained grounds, if not outright victories. However, we observe that among the Igbo women of Eastern Nigeria there is a front which accounts for substantial female deprivation, and which feminists have consistently passed over in their contentions, namely, the feminine cognition also known as epistemology (...) of womanhood. In this paper, using the random sampling method, we have arrived at the conclusion that consciousness oftheir own gender has deprived Igbo women of free expression of their rights and abilities, sometimes as much as constraining societal norms and conditions have done. Consequently, we recommend a conscious adjustment of the epistemology of womanhood among Igbo women. (shrink)

This study investigated how young Italian people experienced the period of peak spread of COVID-19 in their country by probing their emotions, thoughts, events, and actions related to interpersonal and community bonds. This approach to the pandemic will highlight social dimensions that characterized contextual interactions from the specific perspective of Community Psychology. The aim was to investigate young people's experiences because they are the most fragile group due to their difficulty staying home and apart from their peers and because they (...) are, at the same time, the most potentially dangerous people due to their urge to gather in groups. The research involved 568 university students, 475 females, and 93 males, with an average age of 21.82 years. The collected data were analyzed with the Grounded Theory Methodology, using the Atlas 8.0 software. From the textual data, representative codes were defined and grouped into 10 categories, which reflect the individuals' prosocial attitudes, behaviors, and values. These categories formed three macro-categories, called: “Collective Dimensions,” which includes Connectedness, Solidarity, Italian-ness, Social Problems, and Collective Mourning; “Prosocial Orientation,” which includes Trust and Hope; and “Collective Values,” which includes Values of Freedom, Respect of Social Rules, and Civic-Mindedness. All these macro-categories are indicative of the shared feelings experienced by Italians during the first time of the pandemic. Further practical implications of these results will be discussed, including a consideration of the risk of developing distress and improving well-being, as well as promoting preventive behaviors. (shrink)

The spread of COVID-19 in Italy resulted in the implementation of a lockdown that obligated the first time the general populace to remain at home for approximately two months. This lockdown interrupted citizens’ professional and educational activities, in addition to closing shops, offices and educational institutions. The resulting changes in people’s daily routines and activities induced unexpected changes in their thoughts, feelings and attitudes, in addition to altering their life perceptions. Consequently, the present study explores how young adults perceived their (...) lives under lockdown during the final week of March 2020, when the reported number of daily coronavirus infections reached its peak in Italy. The research was carried out among 293 university students (234 women and 59 men) with an average age of 20.85 years old (SD = 3.23). The researchers asked participants to describe the emotions, thoughts and experiences that characterized their time under lockdown. The study analyzed specific narratives related to time and space using grounded theory methodology, which was applied using Atlas 8 software, leading to the creation of 68 codes. The study organized these codes into three specific categories: confined in the present, confined in the past, and striving toward one’s goals. Finally, the researchers also created a core-category labeled “continuity of being.” The results showed that the closure of open spaces caused a division in participants’ perceptions of time continuity, with many viewing themselves as feeling fragmented and as living the present in a static and fixed way. Additionally, participants also saw the present as being discontinuous from the past, while, simultaneously, projecting toward the future and the changes it might bring. Finally, this study examined further implications surrounding individual projecting among young people in greater depth. (shrink)

1. pte. Ideología elemental o lógica.--2. pte. Ideología abstractiva o metafísica.--3. pte. Ideología oratoria o retórica y Apéndice de documentos.

But under the requirement of philosophic consistency, and the impact of the perfectly valid reflection that experience is always my experience, and never part of some object independent of me, the world shrinks to the extension of my experience only, and I am left with bundles of my sensations. What are the natural consequences of such an epistemological sophistication?One plausible and natural reaction is what one might call the ‘Indian’ one. It runs roughly as follows: my experience of the world (...) is, alas, only my experience. It is not ‘the real’. Moreover, the world disclosed in my experience is one of misery, precariousness, insecurity, which ends in old age and death and within which no secure, reliable, undeceptive goods can be found. The flux and precariousness which make it so unhappy a place, also make it most ill-suited to be an object of knowledge. — E. Gellner (1974: 114). (shrink)

Agues that Confucianism and other East Asian philosophical traditions can be resources for understanding and addressing current global challenges such as climate change and hunger.

Part One of the paper argues against evidentialism and individualism in religiousepistemology, and in favor of a “social turn” in the field. The idea here is that humanbelief in general, and religious belief in particular, is largely characterized by epistemicdependence on other persons. An adequate epistemology, it is agued, ought to recognizeand account for social epistemic dependence.Part Two considers a problem that becomes salient when we make such a turn. Inshort, how are we to understand the transmission of knowledge and (...) rational faith in areligious tradition? The problem arises because, by all accounts, even the best traditionstransmit superstitions, self-serving prejudices, and other things that are down right falseon any reasonable view. So how is it that these same traditions can also transmit rationalfaith and even knowledge by means of the very same channels, for example channels ofreligious authority and religious teaching?Part Three offers a tentative solution to this problem. (shrink)

Elinor Mason draws on ethics and responsibility theory to present a pluralistic view of both wrongness and blameworthiness. Mason argues that our moral concepts, rightness and wrongness, must be connected to our responsibility concepts. But the connection is not simple. She identifies three different ways to be blameworthy, corresponding to different ways of acting wrongly. The paradigmatic way to be blameworthy is to act subjectively wrongly. Mason argues for an account of subjective obligation that is connected to the notion of (...) trying - to act rightly is try to do well by morality, to act wrongly (and to be blameworthy) is to fail to try hard enough. Trying involves understanding morality, those who do not grasp morality are in a different category. So agents might also be blameworthy for being oriented away from what really matters. In that case, agents are blameworthy in a different sense, the detached sense. Finally, we can become blameworthy by taking responsibility in cases where our agency is ambiguous. In the final section, Mason gives us an account of taking responsibility and agues that that is an important art of our responsibility practices. (shrink)

There can be no justice that is not spatial. Against a recent tendency to despatialise law, matter, bodies and even space itself, this book insists on spatialising them, arguing that there can be neither law nor justice that are not articulated through and in space. Spatial Justice presents a new theory and a radical application of the material connection between space – in the geographical as well as sociological and philosophical sense – and the law – in the broadest sense (...) that includes written and oral law, but also embodied social and political norms. More specifically, it argues that spatial justice is the struggle of various bodies – human, natural, non-organic, technological – to occupy a certain space at a certain time. Seen in this way, spatial justice is the most radical offspring of the spatial turn, since, as this book demonstrates, spatial justice can be found in the core of most contemporary legal and political issues – issues such as geopolitical conflicts, environmental issues, animality, colonisation, droning, the cyberspace and so on. In order to ague this, the book employs the _lawscape_, as the tautology between law and space, and the concept of _atmosphere_ in its geological, political, aesthetic, legal and biological dimension. Written by a leading theorist in the area, _Spatial Justice: Body, Lawscape, Atmosphere_ forges a new interdisciplinary understanding of space and law, while offering a fresh approach to current geopolitical, spatiolegal and ecological issues. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that epistemic injustices can be understood and explained as social pathologies of recognition, and that this way of conceptualizing epistemic injustices can help us develop proper diagnostic and corrective treatments for them. I distinguish between two different kinds of recognition deficiency—quantitative recognition deficits and misrecognitions—and I ague that while the rectification of the former simply requires more recognition, the rectification of the latter calls for a shift in the mode of recognition, that is, a deep (...) transformation of the recognition dynamics so that other forms of recognition can emerge. Arguing against incremental recognitional approaches that aim only at increasing social visibility/audibility, I examine communicative dysfunctions around the phenomenon of racist violence in order to show how problems of misrecognition persist and become recalcitrant even when quantitative recognition deficits disappear. (shrink)

The question of how to interpret spontaneous collapse theories of quantum mechanics is an open one. One issue involves what link one should use to go from wave function talk to talk of ordinary macroscopic objects. Another issue involves whether that link should be taken ontologically seriously. In this paper, I ague that the link should be taken ontologically seriously; I argue against an ontology consisting solely of the wave function. I then consider three possible links: the fuzzy link, the (...) accessible mass density link, and the mass density simpliciter link. I show that the first two links have serious anomalies which render them unacceptable. I show that the mass density simpliciter link, in contrast, is viable. (shrink)

Among the most pressing philosophical questions occupying those interested in the ethics of the family is why should parents, as opposed to charity workers or state officials, raise children. In their recent Family Values, Brighouse and Swift have further articulated and strengthen their own justification of the parent-child relationship by appealing to its crucial role in enabling the child’s proper development and in allowing parents to play a valuable fiduciary role in the lives of children. In this paper, I argue (...) that the set of interests Brighouse and Swift identify as necessary for the justification of the family fails to account for the different stages and the different cultural settings that mark the parent-child relationship. In particular, I ague that their justification of the family fails to satisfy the following two desiderata: (i) that the justification for the parent-child relationship should ideally track the good-making feature(s) of the relationship that extend across its entire history, and (ii) such justification should ideally explain what is valuable about the parent-child relationship in both liberal and non-liberal family contexts. In light of my critique, I sketch an alternative account of family values, one that appeals directly to the special mode of caring we see in the parent-child relationship, a form of caring that is certainly present in non-liberal societies and that typically extends across a lifetime. (shrink)

Within analytic philosophy, the existence of collective knowledge has been motivated by means of two apparently distinct, and in direct competition with one another, theoretical approaches: (i) the commitment model and (ii) the distributed model. This paper agues, however, that to fully account for collaborative knowledge—i.e., a special kind of collective knowledge—both models are required. In other words, there is at least one kind of collective knowledge, the account of which requires treating the two models not as competitors but as (...) complementary to each other. If that’s correct, not only can we gain a deeper understanding of the specifics surrounding collaborative knowledge but also a clearer picture of the broader debate surrounding collective knowledge. (shrink)

Paraphrase is ubiquitous in philosophy, especially in discussions about ontological commitment. But should it be? Paraphrases are seldom accompanied by evidence that would convince, say, a linguist that the paraphrase and the paraphrased sentence have the same meaning. Indeed, from the perspective of linguistics, many paraphrases would seem to be nothing but bad jokes. For this reason, many philosophers have become deeply suspicious about paraphrase. I ague in this paper that this worry is misguided--that successful paraphrases do not need to (...) preserve semantic content, and that the way that paraphrase has been used in Quinean meta-ontology, and philosophical inquiry more generally, corresponds, at least roughly, to the way it should be used. (shrink)

It is uncontroversial that there is a historical connection between Reid and American pragmatism. What is unclear is whether, as has recently been suggested, Reid’s own views—in particular, his epistemological views—contain an important pragmatist element. This chapter agues in the affirmative, but suggests that commentators have mischaracterized the pragmatist character of Reid’s position, including his response to the skeptic: “the primacy of practice” constitutes an essential feature of his epistemological views proper and his distinctive “third way” between dogmatism and skepticism.

A number of authors have agued the case that there is empirical evidence that the universe (or particular configurations within it) must be the outcome of intelligent design. Recent books by William Dembski and Dean Overman, though different in style and level of argumentation, reach a similar conclusion: the universe, or certain forms within it, cannot be explained without appeal to design as a mode of causation. But exactly what is the operative definition for intelligent design in these works? And (...) how convincing is their case for the necessity of appealing to this type of design in causal explanations? (shrink)

The paper sketches out the conception of philosophy as metaphysics of science, seeking to construct a complete and coherent view of the world including ourselves on the basis of science. It goes into ontological commitments stemming from fundamental physics, notably the ontology of structural realism, and it relates these issues to the controversy between Humean metaphysics and a metaphysics of powers. The paper agues that the ontological commitments called for by fundamental physics are not suffi cient to construct a complete (...) and coherent view of the world; on the contrary, we have to let commitments stemming from the special sciences exert an infl uence on the ontology of fundamantal physics itself. (shrink)

This article presents Durkheim as a Neo-Kantian social thinker and a source of the theory of emotional contagion. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is examined as Durkheim’s paradigm case of Neo-Kantianism. He is first considered among the intellectual context of French Neo-Kantianism and its figures Charles Renouvier, Émile Boutroux, and Octave Hamelin, all whom were influential in his formative years. Durkheim’s Neo-Kantianism in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is then juxtaposed to the Neo-Kantian legal philosophy of Emil Lask (...) and Hans Kelsen. Agued is that Durkheim’s notions of distortion and emotional contagion are his leading contributions to Neo-Kantianism. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates the Hong Kong government's recent attempt to introduce cross-curricular themes into the school curriculum. It is agued that the policy failed to have a significant impact because many of its key elements defined the themes as marginal and dispensable. Moreover, the policy embodied a discourse which portrayed teachers as empowered and, consequently, as the primary source of problems of its implementation.

In Plato’s Apology (29a-b), Socrates agues that he does not fear death; indeed, to fear death is a sign of ignorance. It is to claim to know what one in fact does not know (Ap. 29 a-b). Perhaps, Socrates suggests, death is not a great evil after all, but “the greatest of all goods.” At the end of the dialogue, after the judges have voted on the final verdict and Socrates has received the death penalty, the philosopher considers two common (...) views of death: that death is a long dreamless sleep and that death is a journey to another place - Hades. According to Socrates, either of these views of death would be acceptable to him; the one, because he would receive a wonderful rest with no dreams to disturb him; the other, because he would be able to talk philosophy with those who had gone before with impunity. In this paper, I will examine Socrates’ view of death, and I will argue that, according to Socrates, there could be a third perspective on death that will not only make him truly immortal in a certain way, but will also immortalize the practice of Socratic philosophy. Hence, Socrates embraces his sentence because dying at the right time and dying in the right way provides him the possibility of a good death. <br><br>. (shrink)

Jild-i 1: Muntakhab-i ās̲ār-i: Sant Agūstīn, tarjumah-ʼi Muḥammad Taqī Bahrāmī Ḥarrān; Tūmās Akvīnās, tarjumah-ʼi Manūchihr Buzurgmihr; Bārūkh Ispīnūzā, tarjumah-ʼi Abū Ṭālib Ṣārimī; Bilz Pāskāl, tarjumah-ʼi Ḥusayn Kasmāʼī, va muntakhabātī az: Ūpānīshādhā, Dimāpādā, Sūrāngāmāsūtrā, Bhāgavat Gītāyā tarjumah-ʼi Riz̤ā Ṣaddūqī --.

This w ork starts from a reali t y , that of the immense number of forced mi g rants/ refugees w ho, as victims of forces th e y cannot control resulting from the mass i v e economic, social and political uphe a v als, go to and fro in rapid and ceaseless m o v ement. This fl o w of millions of ind i viduals is not e f fect i v e l y r e (...) gulated b y the states. The l e gal-political inst r uments, w hich in the past confronted on l y v ague l y similar pro b lems, are tod a y complete l y inadequate. The concept of citizenship based on national identity is un a b le to sol v e the di f f iculties arising from a g r o wing demand for justice, for rights, b y a population that w ants to stop being treated as an object but that does not belong to a speci f ic identity nor desires it . Th e solution proposed is the defense of a un i v ersal conception of human rights requiring inte r national cou r ts capa b le of enforcing them. (shrink)

Michael Clark has recently argued that the slippery slope argument against voluntary euthanasia is ‘entirely consequentialist’ and that its use to justify continued prohibition of voluntary euthanasia involves a failure to treat patients who request assistance in ending their lives as ends in themselves. This article agues that in fact the slippery slope is consistent with most forms of deontology, and that it need not involve any violation of the principle that people should be treated as ends, depending upon how (...) that principle is construed. It is concluded that supporters of voluntary euthanasia cannot dismiss the slippery slope argument on the basis of deontological principles but must take seriously the consequences that it postulates and engage in factual argument about their likely extent and about the likely effectiveness of any proposed safeguards. (shrink)

This is the first chapter of Ways of Seeing co-authored with Marc Jeannerod. We ague for a representational approach to the puzzles of both visual perception and visually-guided actions.

This is a discussion of the claim by certain recent philosophers to have established universal human abilities and disabilities on "logical" grounds, or as a priori necessary. These traits would be independent of empirical conditions, and not of the sort which could be disproved by psychology which, accordingly, would share its field with the a priori philosopher. The author agues, using a series of examples, that these supposed traits do, or could, vary with empirical conditions, and that it is unlikely (...) that in this psychological area there is any good alternative to inductive methods. (shrink)

Hipólito Unanue. Bartolomé Herrera. Manuel González Prada. José de la Riva Agüero. José Carlos Mariátegui César Vallejo.