Qu’est-ce qui fait qu’un discours atteint son effet? Comment évaluer celui-ci? Au premier siècle, Pseudo-Longin compose le traité Du Sublime et y étudie ce qui mène l’expression linguistique à son plus haut degré d’efficacité. Pour l’atteindre, un rôle fondamental est attribué à la phantasia, assimilée par la plupart des auteurs anciens à ce qui, dans le discours, produit des « images ». Le texte qui suit s’arrête à démontrer, d’une part, la place occupée par Pseudo-Longin dans le long débat philosophique (...) et rhétorique sur la phantasia et, d’autre part, sa contribution à la compréhension de celle-ci. Associée par métonymie à la vision, la phantasia s’adresse à l’ensemble des sensations et correspond à l’art de faire sentir le discours en chair propre. Réussie, elle permet la communication des sensations entre le discours, l’orateur et le public. (shrink)

The animal in Nietzsche's philosophy -- Culture and civilization -- Politics and promise -- Culture and economy -- Giving and forgiving -- Animality, creativity, and historicity -- Animality, language, and truth -- Biopolitics and the question of animal life.

I argue that molecules may not have structure in isolation. I support this by investigating how quantum models identify structure for isolated molecules. Specifically, I distinguish between two sets of models: those that identify structure in isolation and those that do not. The former identify structure because they presuppose structural information about the target system via the Born- Oppenheimer approximation. However, it is an idealisation to assume structure in isolation because there is no empirical evidence of this. In fact, whenever (...) structure is empirically examined it is always partially determined by factors that are absent in isolation. Together with the growing empirical evidence that isolated molecules behave in non-classical ways, this shows that the quantum models that do not identify structure are more faithful representations of isolated molecules. (shrink)

The debate in Metaphysics of Science concerning the interaction between metaphysics and science has been mainly approached from the perspective of the scientific discipline of physics. In this paper, I address this debate from a different framework, namely that of biology. I pay attention to the recent characterization of Metaphysics of Biology and the different forms in which philosophers use metaphysics when addressing conceptual biological problems. In doing so, I argue that two main lessons can be obtained that can serve (...) to enrich the debate in Metaphysics of Science: i) that the interaction between metaphysics and science seems to be more complex than generally considered; and ii) that the type of metaphysics that is interacting with science when characterizing the ontological status of the world is neither the a priori nor the naturalized one, but a different form of metaphysics that will be labelled here as applied metaphysics. (shrink)

Contiene: el discurso de recepción del autor como Miembro Académico de la Facultad de Filosofía y Educación de la Universidad de Chile.

In this article, I offer a theoretical account of a central yet surprisingly overlooked form of legal influence or control, one that I refer to as the law’s ‘exhortative’ influence. The law exercises an ‘imperative’ influence when it purports to control agents’ behavior by imposing on them legal duties to act or refrain from acting in the legally desired or repelled way. By contrast, it exercises what I call an exhortative form of influence when it aims at impacting agents’ reasons (...) for action whilst refraining from mandating or prohibiting the legally desired or repelled conduct. The law’s exhortative control or influence must be distinguished not only from its imperative influence, but also from what I call the law’s merely ‘instructive’ form of influence, such as the one provided by so-called power-conferring laws. Though I illustrate the functioning of this special form of legal control—the law’s exhortative influence—by using primarily the example of the law of contracts, the article offers novel insights about law in general as a mode of social ordering by developing a theory of the structure of ‘legal incentives’. Legal incentives, I contend, are the means through which the law exercises its exhortative influence. Clearly distinguishing different techniques of legal influence is not only of analytical interest, but should invite us to think of accounts of the justification of legal authority that consider the similarities but also the differences in the moral significance of these diverse techniques. (shrink)

The Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) provides that “an individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.” We show that the UDDA contains two conflicting interpretations of the phrase “cessation of functions.” By one interpretation, what matters for the determination of death is the cessation of spontaneous functions only, regardless of their generation by artificial means. By the (...) other, what matters is the cessation of both spontaneous and artificially supported functions. Because each UDDA criterion uses a different interpretation, the law is conceptually inconsistent. A single consistent interpretation would lead to the conclusion that conscious individuals whose respiratory and circulatory functions are artificially supported are actually dead, or that individuals whose brain is entirely and irreversibly destroyed may be alive. We explore solutions to mitigate the inconsistency. (shrink)

There is a persisting debate about what chemical bonds are and whether they exist. I argue that chemical bonds are real patterns of interactions between subatomic particles. This proposal resolves the problems raised in the context of existing understandings of the chemical bond and provides a novel way to defend the reality of chemical bonds.

One of the most plausible and widely discussed examples of strong emergence is molecular structure. The only detailed account of it, which has been very influential, is due to Robin Hendry and is formulated in terms of downward causation. This paper explains Hendry’s account of the strong emergence of molecular structure and argues that it is coherent only if one assumes a diachronic reflexive notion of downward causation. However, in the context of this notion of downward causation, the strong emergence (...) of molecular structure faces three challenges that have not been met and which have so far remained unnoticed. First, the putative empirical evidence presented for the strong emergence of molecular structure equally undermines supervenience, which is one of the main tenets of strong emergence. Secondly, it is ambiguous how the assumption of determinate nuclear positions is invoked for the support of strong emergence, as the role of this assumption in Hendry’s argument can be interpreted in more than one way. Lastly, there are understandings of causation which render the postulation of a downward causal relation between a molecule’s structure and its quantum mechanical entities, untenable. (shrink)

Between the fall of the Soviet Union and the fall of Lehman Brothers, if the Anglophone academy could be said to have arrived at any consensus about the value of Marxist theory, it would be that Marxism was a quaint historical curio at best and a world-historically hubristic folly at worst. Today, however, well on our way through the first quarter of the twenty-first century, we live in a moment of greatly renewed interest in Marxist ideas. This curiosity is stoked (...) by, among other factors, the worldwide economic shocks of 2008 and, in more recent times, by impending climate catastrophe, incipient fascisticization, and the still-ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. Any of these on its own would stand out as a rebuke to the neoliberal triumphalism of the 1990s, famously crystallized in Francis Fukayama's assertion that humanity had arrived at "the end of history," there to find permanently expanding capitalist prosperity. Taken together, they present at least strong prima facie evidence for what Karl Marx identified as the inherently and ineluctably crisis-ridden nature of capital and, therefore, good reason to encounter his writings anew. (shrink)

Requiring family authorization for apnea testing subtracts health professionals control over death determination, a procedure that has traditionally been considered a matter of clinical expertise alone. In this commentary, we first provide evidence showing that health professionals’ (HPs) disposition to act on death determination without family’s prior consent could be much lower than that referred to by Berkowitz and Garrett (2020). We hypothesize that HPs may have reservations about their own expertise as regards death, and may thus hesitate to impose (...) their views on patients’ families. We then address the theoretical question of clinical expertise in death determination by distinguishing judgments about facts (e.g., the presence or absence of spontaneous breathing) from interpretations given of these facts (i.e., their meaning for the vital status of an individual). We argue that, while clinicians may claim some expert authority on the former, they hold no particular authority on the latter. (shrink)

En su Teoría postmetafísica del conocimiento, Antonio M. López Molina muestra detallada y rigurosamente que el vaciamiento sustantivo de la razón y, junto con él, el desmoronamiento de la vieja pretensión filosófica de acceder de manera privilegiada a la verdad (como al Bien o a Dios), no comportan su definitiva quiebra, sino más bien la urgencia de reelaborarla en términos falibilistas y procedimentales; con tal fin –y, a su vez, para asignarle a la filosofía el papel que le ha (...) de corresponder tras el ocaso de todas y cada una de las ilusiones metafísicas– analiza López Molina el concepto de acción comunicativa, capaz de imbricar a las ciencias positivas con el mundo de la vida y proveer el fin –ni utópico ni teológico– de una intersubjetividad no falseada, apoyada en relaciones simétricas de libre reconocimiento recíproco. (shrink)

Moral distress has been well reviewed in the literature with established deleterious side effects for all healthcare professionals, including nurses, physicians, and others. Yet, little is known about the quality and effectiveness of interventions directed to address moral distress. The aim of this integrative review is to analyze published intervention studies to determine their efficacy and applicability across hospital settings. Of the initial 1373 articles discovered in October 2020, 18 were appraised as relevant, with 1 study added by hand search (...) and 2 after a repeated search was completed in January and then in May of 2021, for a total of 22 reviewed articles. This review revealed data mostly from nurses, with some studies making efforts to include other healthcare professions who have experienced moral distress. Education-based interventions showed the most success, though many reported limited power and few revealed statistically lowered moral distress post intervention. This may point to the difficulty in adequately addressing moral distress in real time without adequate support systems. Ultimately, these studies suggest potential frameworks which, when bolstered by organization-wide support, may aid in moral distress interventions making a measurable impact. (shrink)

Holobionts are symbiotic assemblages composed by a macrobe host plus its symbiotic microbiota. In recent years, the ontological status of holobionts has created a great amount of controversy among philosophers and biologists: are holobionts biological individuals or are they rather ecological communities of independent individuals that interact together? Chiu and Eberl have recently developed an eco-immunity account of the holobiont wherein holobionts are neither biological individuals nor ecological communities, but hybrids between a host and its microbiota. According to their account, (...) the microbiota is not a proper part of the holobiont. Yet, it should be regarded as a set of scaffolds that support the individuality of the host. In this paper, we approach Chiu and Eberl’s account from a metaphysical perspective and argue that, contrary to what the authors claim, the eco-immunity account entails that the microorganisms that compose the host’s microbiota are proper parts of the holobiont. Second, we argue that by claiming that holobionts are hybrids, and therefore, not biological individuals, the authors seem to be assuming a controversial position about the ontology of hybrids, which are conventionally characterized as a type of biological individual. In doing so, our paper aligns with the contemporary tendency to incorporate metaphysical resources to shed light on current biological debates and builds on that to provide additional support to the consideration of holobionts as biological individuals from an eco-immunity perspective. (shrink)

This study tests how various kinds of trust impact attitudes toward euthanasia among the general public. The indication that trust might have an impact on euthanasia attitudes is based on the slippery slope argument, which asserts that allowing euthanasia might lead to abuses and involuntary deaths. Adopting this argument usually leads to less positive attitudes towards euthanasia. Tying in with this, it is assumed here that greater trust diminishes such slippery slope fears, and thereby increases euthanasia acceptance.

Why do racist oppression and capitalist exploitation often seem so inescapable and intractable? To describe and explain adequately the persistence of racist ideology, to specify its role in the maintenance of racial capitalism, and to imagine the conditions of its abolition, we must understand racist ideology as a form of false consciousness. False consciousness gets things “right” at the level of appearance, but it mistakes that appearance for a “deep” or essential truth. This chapter articulates a novel, positive account of (...) first-order false consciousness, which occurs in the case of false beliefs about the world that are sustained and superficially justified by objective social arrangements, and of second-order false consciousness, which occurs in the case of false beliefs about how one has come to hold the beliefs that one does. To dismantle racist ideology requires political movements that craft theoretical interventions highlighting the inessentiality and contingency of despised racial groups’ oppressed status, as well as practical interventions aimed at directly undermining the oppressive conditions that are reflected in racist beliefs about the “naturalness” or “appropriateness” of these groups’ degraded status. (shrink)

Veterinary oaths are public declarations sworn by veterinarians, usually when they enter the profession. As such, they may reflect professional and social concerns. Analysis of contemporary veterinary oaths may therefore reveal their ethical foundations. The objective of this article is to contextualize the ethical content of contemporary oaths, in terms of the origin and development of veterinary medicine and wider societal changes such as the intensification of farming and the rise of animal welfare. This informs a comparison of oaths from (...) the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. This analysis suggests some ways in which the oaths might be developed to better reflect contemporary societal values. (shrink)

Two environmental accidents in the mining industry provide the context for this study of the Mitchell, Agle, and Wood (1997, The Academy of Management Review 22, 853–886) analysis of stakeholder salience. I examine the reactions of two stakeholder groups: shareholder response is examined in terms of changing share returns and risk; management response through change in disclosure. I find the two decision-makers reacted at different times. Management responded to the first accident, though not the second. Shareholders responded to the second (...) accident alone. My findings support the Mitchell, Agle, and Wood (MAW) assertion that stakeholder status is impermanent, and determined through the eyes of the decision-maker. (shrink)

Draws on research at college and university campuses to explore the topics of sex, consent, and sexual assault, discussing statistics about the prevalence of campus rape, and offering advice on how to make college a safer experience.

El estudio examina mediante una revisión sistemática la literatura científica. La metodología se basó en la aplicación de los principios de la declaración PRISMA. Los resultados indicaron que la mayor producción de estudios fue en 2021, con predominancia de idioma inglés, España como el mayor productor, Reino Unido con el mayor número de revistas y el uso de realidad aumentada como la estrategia más estudiada. La producción científica en educación, y más particularmente en metodologías aplicada a la educación, ha generado (...) una serie de estudios bibliométricos, los cuales han demostrado la evolución de las mismas en lapsos de tiempo diversos. (shrink)

There has been an exponential rise in use of the term vulnerability across a number of political and policy arenas, including child protection, sexual offences, poverty, development, care for the elderly, patient autonomy, globalisation, war, public health and ecology. Yet despite its increasing deployment, the exact meaning and parameters of this concept remain somewhat elusive. In this article, we explore the interaction of two very different strategies—one in which vulnerability is relied upon by those seeking improved social justice as a (...) mechanism by which to identify, problematise and compel state responses to a universal condition of precarious dependency, and the other in which it is used as a category of neo-liberal governance which legitimates state encroachment whilst constructing ‘vulnerable’ individuals as ‘risk-managers’ who must behave ‘responsibly’ in the face of disadvantage. We suggest that the co-existence of these divergent approaches highlights the fluidity and malleability of the concept of vulnerability. Using sex work as a specific case study, we explore the ways in which vulnerability bears multiple meanings, and has been used in recent times in the furtherance of moralistic and regressive agendas, which collude with, rather than challenge, state power. Without seeking to reject the label or normative import of vulnerability, we call, therefore, for a more circumspect approach to its usage, and a more critical evaluation of recent claims which hail it as a mechanism, preferable to the conventional use of equality paradigms, by which to secure progressive feminist outcomes. (shrink)

Here is something puzzling. Still Lifes can be expressive. Expression involves movement. Hence, (some) Still Lifes move. This seems odd. I consider a novel explanation to this ‘static-dynamic’ puzzle from Mitchell Green (2007). Green defends an analysis of artistic expressivity that is heavily indebted to work on intermodal perception. He says visual stimuli, like colours and shapes, can elicit experienced resemblances to sounds, smells and feelings. This enables viewers to know how an emotion feels by looking at the picture. The (...) hypothesis is intriguing, but I show that his suggestion that we empathize with the pictorial content is implausible and that this exposes a flaw in the way his argument moves from experiential mappings to experiential-affective mappings. Consequently, I register some reservations about the way Green supposes we detect these cross-modal qualities. (shrink)

Marxism is a materialist theory that centers economic life in its analysis of the human social world. This materialist orientation manifests in explanations that take economic class to play a fundamental causal role in determining the emergence, character, and development of race-and sex-based oppression—indeed, of all forms of identity-based oppression within class societies. To say that labor is mediated by class in a class-based society is to say that, in such societies, the class-based division of that activity which produces and (...) reproduces the human species is the definite form in which labor appears, and that the human life which is the product of that self-making activity bears its stamp. Marxism’s emphasis on economic factors as central in the constitution and development of human life has been seized upon as evidence of its alleged “class reductionism”—its supposed tendency to think of all aspects of human life as direct and simple expressions of a class relation. No such thing follows; quite the opposite, a correct understanding of the relationships among capitalism, racism, and sexism only further highlights how central the struggle against each is to the struggles against any of the others. (shrink)

A survey on the knowledge and attitudes towards the Austrian organ donation legislation (an opt-out solution) of selected groups of the Austrian population taking into account factors such as age, gender, level of education, affiliation to healthcare professions and health related studies was conducted.

A blend of self-help, social analysis, and personal narrative that deconstructs what we've been told is ugly and taboo and empowers readers to heal, connect, and revolt against uglification.

This book digs into the complex archaeology of empathy illuminating controversies, epistemic problems and unanswered questions encapsulated within its cross-disciplinary history. The authors ask how a neutral innate capacity to directly understand the actions and feelings of others becomes charged with emotion and moral values associated with altruism or caregiving. They explore how the discovery of the mirror neuron system and its interpretation as the neurobiological basis of empathy has stimulated such an enormous body of research and how in a (...) number of these studies, the moral values and social attitudes underlying empathy in human perception and action are conceptualized as universal traits. It is argued that in the humanities the historical, cultural and scientific genealogies of empathy and its forerunners, such as Einfühlung, have been shown to depend on historical preconditions, cultural procedures, and symbolic systems of production. The multiple semantics of empathy and related concepts are discussed in the context of their cultural and historical foundations, raising questions about these cross-disciplinary constellations. This volume will be of interest to scholars of psychology, art history, cultural research, history of science, literary studies, neuroscience, philosophy and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

The place of chemistry in the metaphysics of science may be viewed as peripheral compared to physics and biology. However, a metaphysics of science that disregards chemistry would be incomplete and ill-informed. This Element establishes this claim by showing how key metaphysical issues are informed by drawing on chemistry. Five metaphysical topics are investigated: natural kinds, scientific realism, reduction, laws and causation. These topics are spelled out from the perspective of ten chemical case studies, each of which illuminates the novel (...) ways that metaphysics of science can be informed by chemistry. (shrink)