New fetal therapies offer important prospects for improving health. However, having to consider both the fetus and the pregnant woman makes the risk–benefit analysis of fetal therapy trials challenging. Regulatory guidance is limited, and proposed ethical frameworks are overly restrictive or permissive. We propose a new ethical framework for fetal therapy research. First, we argue that considering only biomedical benefits fails to capture all relevant interests. Thus, we endorse expanding the considered benefits to include evidence-based psychosocial effects of fetal therapies. (...) Second, we reject the commonly proposed categorical risk and/or benefit thresholds for assessing fetal therapy research. Instead, we propose that the individual risks for the pregnant woman and the fetus should be justified by the benefits for them and the study’s social value. Studies that meet this overall proportionality criterion but have mildly unfavorable risk–benefit ratios for pregnant women and/or fetuses may be acceptable. (shrink)

This paper explores the distinction between active and passive powers. Interest in the distinction has recently been revived in some quarters of the philosophy of action as some have sought to elucidate the distinction between action and passion (the changes that happen to a substance) in terms of the former (Hyman, 2015; Mayr, 2011; Lowe 2013). If there is a distinction between active and passive powers, parallel to the distinction between action and passion, what is it? In this paper, I (...) distinguish two ways of drawing it. According to the first one, active and passive powers are distinguished by the ways in which their manifestations come about. According to the second, they are distinguished by their directedness, i.e. what they are powers to do. Both accounts are examined and the latter is defended against the former. I argue that active powers are powers to alter, modify, corrupt or change something. (shrink)

Drawing on Austin’s speech act theory, many influential scholars view hate speech in terms of speech acts, namely acts of subordination (MacKinnon 1987; Langton 1993, 2012, 2014; Hornsby and Langton 1998; McGowan 2003, 2004; Kukla and Lance 2009; Langton, Haslanger and Anderson 2012; Maitra 2012; Kukla 2014). Austin’s distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts offers a way to set apart speech that constitutes subordination, and speech that merely causes subordination. The aim of my paper is to address the main objection (...) to accounts of hate speech in terms of illocutionary speech acts, that is the Authority Problem. In particular I will claim that what is missing from previous proposals is attention to the broader social context in which ordinary instances of hate speech are embedded, and in particular, attention to the social status of both the speaker and the audience. While the social position of the speaker has been examined by several approaches, the social position of the audience has too often been neglected. I will show that not only must the speaker have a certain kind of standing or social position in order to perform speech acts of subordination, but also the audience must have a certain kind of standing or social position in order to either license or object to the speaker’s authority, and her acts of subordination. (shrink)

Slurs are derogatory terms targeting individuals and groups of individuals on the basis of race, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation. The aim of my paper is to propose an account of appropriated uses of slurs – i.e. uses by targeted groups of their own slurs for non-derogatory purposes, as in the appropriation of ‘nigger’ by the African-American community, or the appropriation of ‘queer’ by the homosexual community. In my proposal appropriated uses are conceived as echoic, in Relevance Theory terms: (...) in-groups echo derogatory uses in ways and contexts that make manifest the dissociation from the offensive contents. I will show that the echoic strategy has interesting advantages over alternative theories, and especially over Anderson and Lepore’s deflationary strategy. (shrink)

Con Giordano Bruno asistimos a la recuperación de doctrinas neoplatónicas y herméticas que conducen a una comprensión animista y dinámica de la naturaleza, así como a una exaltación del hombre en tanto conoce y actúa sobre el mundo. En el contexto de un universo vivo y animado, Bruno necesita mediaciones en el espacio que hay entre, por un lado, la naturaleza finita del hombre y, por el otro, la divinidad infinita explicada en la naturaleza para fundamentar la teoría mágica de (...) sus obras latinas. Precisamente, la existencia de los demonios en los sistemas neoplatónicos viene a cumplir con este propósito. Sostenemos que existe una continuidad entre la doctrina demonológica que Bruno presenta en su obra latina y la metafísica y cosmología de sus diálogos italianos. Esta continuidad se verifica en la presencia de dos categorías filosóficas importantes del pensamiento bruniano presente en la demonología del De magia naturali : imaginación y vínculos. Así pues, en primer lugar, indagaremos la recepción de la doctrina neoplatónica en la demonología de los siglos XV y XVI, a partir de la cual Bruno desarrolla el marco teórico y filosófico de su doctrina demonológica. En segundo lugar, estudiaremos la naturaleza y función de los demonios en el De magia naturali y su relación con la imaginación y los vínculos en la filosofía del Nolano. (shrink)

Reflections are interesting perceptual phenomena, which have inspired both scientific research in the psychology of perception and research in the visual arts. The paper discusses one of the most peculiar aspect of mirror images, i.e. the fact that they are characterized by identity and opposition at the same time. The discussion encompasses not only the experimental literature, but it also relies on considerations from a series of artworks – which are based on the manipulation of the structure of mirror images. (...) Both art and science can make us aware of some of the processes involved in seeing. (shrink)

Benedetto Varchi and Averroism. The article examines the role played by Averroes and the Averroist tradition in Benedetto Varchi's philosophical works. The first part clarifies why Varchi defines Dante as an "Averroist" and reconstructs his ori-­ ginal reading of the first verse in Paradise. The second part argues that Varchi's plan to vernacularize philosophy, often interpreted as an attempt to "demo-­ cratize" knowledge, should not prevent us from recognizing that he emphasizes the moral and intellectual differences existing among human beings. (...) Though following Aristotle in saying that "all men by nature desire to know", Varchi shows no qualms in acknowledging that most of them cannot fulfil this desire and, referring to Averroes and Galen, claims that because of their complexio most people cannot understand phi-­ losophy. (shrink)

O presente artigo visa explorar as ricas relações entre Voltaire e Genebra, destacando as questões e o contexto que formam a obra Ideias republicanas e seu combate pela tolerância.

Contextualism is a view about meaning, semantic content and truth-conditions, bearing significant consequences for the characterisation of explicit and implicit content, the decoding/inferring distinction and the semantics/pragmatics interface. According to the traditional perspective in semantics (called "literalism" or "semantic minimalism"), it is possible to attribute truth-conditions to a sentence independently of any context of utterance, i.e. in virtue of its meaning alone. We must then distinguish between the proposition literally expressed by a sentence ("what is said" by the sentence, its (...) literal truth-conditions) and the implicit meaning of the sentence ("what is implicated" by a speaker uttering the sentence). Over the past forty years, however, an increasing number of linguists and philosophers have begun to underline the phenomenon of semantic underdetermination: the encoded meaning of the sentence employed by a speaker underdetermines the proposition explicitly expressed by an utterance of that sentence. According to the extreme version of this perspective – labelled "radical contextualism" - no sentence of a natural language expresses a complete proposition, or has fixed truth-conditions, even when unambiguous and devoid of indexicals. A sentence expresses a proposition only when completed and enriched with pragmatic constituents that do not correspond to any syntactic element of the sentence and yet are part of its semantic interpretation. More broadly, "contextualism" may be used to refer to a family of views which includes moderate contextualism (also called "indexicalism"), radical contextualism and non-indexical contextualism – and which contrasts with semantic minimalism. (shrink)

À l’origine de ce recueil, un double colloque international, l’un à Lyon, l’autre à Naples, a réuni des spécialistes de philosophes du XVIIe siècle et du XVIIIe siècle pour traiter de l’apport des courants dits "libertins" et, plus largement, de la libre pensée à ceux qu’une historiographie traditionnelle, mais encore vivace, reconnaît comme seuls "philosophes": Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Pascal, Bayle, Leibniz, Kant... Il s’agit donc, d’une part, de reconnaître l’apport de la libre pensée à l’évolution des idées et, d’autre part, (...) de mettre les grands penseurs en dialogue avec le contexte historique qui fut le leur. L’ensemble des interventions met remarquablement en évidence l’importance des arguments de la pensée critique et de la libre pensée à l’âge classique, qu’ils soient acceptés, refusés ou réutilisés, tout en montrant la complexité d’une époque où, malgré la censure régnante, les idées progressent à travers et grâce à un dialogue constant, qu’il soit paisible ou conflictuel, entre les penseurs plus ou moins religieux. --. (shrink)

a relação entre razão e natureza envolve um dos principais aspectos da crítica da teleologia de Kant. Visando destacar esta relação, investigarei o conceito de técnica da natureza, tal como introduzida na Crítica da faculdade de julgar. De acordo com Kant, a técnica da natureza permite as leis da razão a representarem o acordo dos princípios transcendentais da razão com a natureza. Deste modo, o conceito da técnica da natureza assume um papel prolífico ao expor, através de uma analogia com (...) as faculdades humanas, a atividade produtiva da natureza, como se sua atividade fosse orientada a fins.The relationship between reason and nature embodies one of the main aspects of Kant‟s critique of teleology. In order to highlight this relation, I shall investigate the concept of the technique of nature, as it has been introduced in Critique of the Power of Judgment. According to Kant, the technique of nature allows the laws of reason to represent the agreement of the transcendental principles of reason with nature. Thus, the concept of the technique of nature assumes a fruitful role by exposing, through an analogy with human faculties, the productive activity of nature, as if its activity were oriented towards ends. (shrink)