Drawing on a landscape analysis of existing data-sharing initiatives, in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders, and public deliberations with community advisory panels across the U.S., we describe features of the evolving medical information commons. We identify participant-centricity and trustworthiness as the most important features of an MIC and discuss the implications for those seeking to create a sustainable, useful, and widely available collection of linked resources for research and other purposes.

Providing information to consumers in the form of food labels about modern systems of animal farming is believed to be crucial for increasing their awareness of animal suffering and for promoting technological change towards more welfare-friendly forms of husbandry (CIWF, 2007). In this paper we want to explore whether and how food labels carrying information about the lives of animals are used by consumers while shopping for meat and other animal foods. In order to achieve this, we draw upon a (...) series of focus group discussions that were held in Italy as part of a large EU funded project (Welfare Quality®). In the focus group discussions we addressed how, when or if, claims made about the lives of animals on food labels intervened in what the participants bought and ate. We contend that such labels bring the lives of animals to the forefront and act as new ‘subjectifiers’ (Latour, Citation2005: 212) that offer a new tool for becoming an ‘ethically competent consumer’, who cares about the lives of animals while shopping for food. However, this offer is not always easily accommodated within existing competences and previous commitments, as it requires a reassessment of existing, and often intimate, practices of shopping, cooking and eating. We argue that new labels carrying welfare claims, with their intention of increasing market transparency, produce two contrasting outcomes: they open new spaces of action, which offer an opportunity for investing in new competences and for engaging with animal welfare issues, in short, they allow an ‘ethically competent consumer’ to emerge, but they also produce another outcome, or a collateral casualty (Bauman, Citation2007), namely the ethically non-competent consumer. ‘In daily matters, be competent’ (From How to live ethically, the Tao Te Ching). (shrink)

Providing information to consumers in the form of food labels about modern systems of animal farming is believed to be crucial for increasing their awareness of animal suffering and for promoting technological change towards more welfare-friendly forms of husbandry (CIWF, 2007). In this paper we want to explore whether and how food labels carrying information about the lives of animals are used by consumers while shopping for meat and other animal foods. In order to achieve this, we draw upon a (...) series of focus group discussions that were held in Italy as part of a large EU funded project (Welfare Quality®). In the focus group discussions we addressed how, when or if, claims made about the lives of animals on food labels intervened in what the participants bought and ate. We contend that such labels bring the lives of animals to the forefront and act as new ‘subjectifiers’ (Latour, Citation2005: 212) that offer a new tool for becoming an ‘ethically competent consumer’, who cares about the lives of animals while shopping for food. However, this offer is not always easily accommodated within existing competences and previous commitments, as it requires a reassessment of existing, and often intimate, practices of shopping, cooking and eating. We argue that new labels carrying welfare claims, with their intention of increasing market transparency, produce two contrasting outcomes: they open new spaces of action, which offer an opportunity for investing in new competences and for engaging with animal welfare issues, in short, they allow an ‘ethically competent consumer’ to emerge, but they also produce another outcome, or a collateral casualty (Bauman, Citation2007), namely the ethically non-competent consumer. ‘In daily matters, be competent’ (From How to live ethically, the Tao Te Ching). (shrink)

Do salient normative claims about politics require moral premises? Political moralists think they do, political realists think they do not. We defend the viability of realism in a two-pronged way. First, we show that a number of recent attacks on realism, as well as realist responses to those attacks, unduly conflate distinctively political normativity and non-moral political normativity. Second, we argue that Alex Worsnip and Jonathan Leader-Maynard’s recent attack on realist arguments for a distinctively political normativity depends on assuming moralism (...) as the default view, which places an excessive burden on the viability of realism, and so begs the question. Our discussion, though, does not address the relative merits of realism and moralism, so its upshot is relatively ecumenical: moralism need not be the view that all apt normative political judgments are moral judgments, and realism need not be the view that no apt normative political judgments are moral judgments. (shrink)

Does political realism have anything to contribute to the debates about migration in normative political theory? Anything well-established ‘moralist’ theories do not already acknowledge, that is? Addressing Jaggar’s (_Aristotelian Soc Suppl_ Vol. XCIV, pp. 87–113, 2020) and Finlayson’s (_Aristotelian Soc Suppl_ Vol. XCIV, pp. 115–139, 2020) critical intercessions into contemporary discourse about migration I argue that a political realist approach to the theory of migration faces what I call the ‘surplus challenge’: realists supposedly have no normative surplus over (liberal) cosmopolitan (...) and nationalist moralist approaches. This nothing-more-to-add narrative is a common argument against the possibility and integrity of political realism (as seen in, _inter alia_, Leader-Maynard and Worsnip in _Ethics_ 128(4), pp. 756–787, 2018). I show how it misconstrues the realist agenda. Finlayson, on the other hand, paints the realist intervention as primarily about paying closer attention to colonialism’s long legacy. A properly radical intrusion, however, addresses the unchecked and unwarranted, overbearing normative power of moral principles. I will conclude that for the realist, shaking up the discipline will not come as easy as pointing at some overly historicised facts. However, and despite this, the realist intervention rightly problematises contemporary philosophy of migration for its moral normativism. A radical realist approach to issues of migration, which unmasks the unjustified ‘microphysics’ political power hiding behind normative veneers, is a properly cataclysmic intrusion and the right way forward. (shrink)

Natural disaster events such as drought affect the broader economy and inflict adverse consequences for firms because of spill-over effects in an integrated economy. Contrary to the expectation that firms would engage in higher levels of corporate tax avoidance strategies when they experience a negative cash flow shock, we document consistent evidence that firms engage in less corporate tax avoidance when their headquarter states experience drought. Reduced tax avoidance is more pronounced among firms with higher CSR performance and among firms (...) operating in states that experience a GDP decline. Collectively, the findings of our study demonstrate prosocial and ethical behavior of U.S. firms when they experience natural disaster events. (shrink)

In an article published in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Nick Zangwill (2021) argues that “eating meat is morally good” (p. 295). It is “our duty” to eat animals, he says, “when it is part of a practice that has benefited animals” (Zangwill, 2021, p. 295). Since certain animals can be said to exist in some sense only because of meat-eating practices, and those practices benefit animals if they have good lives, argues Zangwill, that's why we owe it (...) to the animals to eat them—it is our moral duty. I carefully dissect this crude argument into its components and debunk its conclusion. (shrink)

From the above lines one can see that St. Cyril of Alexandria is presented, along with a great theologian, as it is clear from the writings against the heretics of his time, like a true apologist for Christianity with paganism dispute that resurfaced after Emperor Julian, the Apostate. On the other hand, the writing of the Orthodox Patriarch proves to be of great importance in understanding the difficulties experienced by the Christian faith in a territory where paganism flourished from time (...) to time. Moreover, the work of St. Cyril can be put together with Christian apologists ‗works from previous centuries, being of a real interest for our times into a field so necessary but forgot in the theological schools and pastoral work: Apologetics. (shrink)

This open access book provides original, up-to-date case studies of “ethics dumping” that were largely facilitated by loopholes in the ethics governance of low and middle-income countries. It is instructive even to experienced researchers since it provides a voice to vulnerable populations from the fore mentioned countries. Ensuring the ethical conduct of North-South collaborations in research is a process fraught with difficulties. The background conditions under which such collaborations take place include extreme differentials in available income and power, as well (...) as a past history of colonialism, while differences in culture can add a new layer of complications. In this context, up-to-date case studies of unethical conduct are essential for research ethics training. (shrink)

La Histoire de Charles XII, roi de Suède es un texto a menudo desvalorizado por los especialistas en los trabajos históricos e historiográficos de Voltaire, en la medida en que ven en él una obra menor, que se encontraría más cerca de la Henriade, el poema épico que el filósofo había publicado en 1728 en honor a Enrique IV, que de sus grandes trabajos históricos, el Siècle de Louis XIV y el Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations. El (...) objetivo de este trabajo es demostrar que la Histoire de Charles XII anticipa, a pesar de ser uno de los primeros escritos históricos de Voltaire, el método que utilizaría a partir de los años 40 en sus obras mayores. Además, el texto pone de relieve la existencia de cierta distancia entre el programa que el filósofo se propone ejecutar en el escrito y su materialización. Por otra parte, el artículo arroja algunas luces sobre el papel de los “grandes hombres” en la filosofía de la historia de Voltaire. (shrink)

Explores the moral dimensions of the current global role of the U.S. military.

A number of authors have argued that Peano Arithmetic supplemented with a logical validity predicate is inconsistent in much the same manner as is PA supplemented with an unrestricted truth predicate. In this paper I show that, on the contrary, there is no genuine paradox of logical validity—a completely general logical validity predicate can be coherently added to PA, and the resulting system is consistent. In addition, this observation lead to a number of novel, and important, insights into the nature (...) of logical validity itself. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the ethical concerns that may arise from the synthesis of human DNA. To date, only small stretches of DNA have been constructed, but the prospect of generating human genomes is becoming feasible. At the same time, the significance of genes for identity, health and reproduction is coming under increased scrutiny. We examine the implications of DNA synthesis and its impact on debates over the relationship with our DNA and the ownership of our genes, its potential (...) to disrupt common understandings of reproduction and privacy, and the way in which synthetic DNA challenges traditional associations between genes and identity. We explore the degree to which synthetic DNA may further undermine overgeneticised accounts of identity, health, reproduction, parenthood and privacy that are prevalent in the public domain and in some areas of policy-making. While avoiding making normative claims of our own, we conclude that there is a need for reflection on the ethical implications of these developing technologies before they are on us. (shrink)

A notion of feasible function of finite type based on the typed lambda calculus is introduced which generalizes the familiar type 1 polynomial-time functions. An intuitionistic theory IPVω is presented for reasoning about these functions. Interpretations for IPVω are developed both in the style of Kreisel's modified realizability and Gödel's Dialectica interpretation. Applications include alternative proofs for Buss's results concerning the classical first-order system S12 and its intuitionistic counterpart IS12 as well as proofs of some of Buss's conjectures concerning IS12, (...) and a proof that IS12 cannot prove that extended Frege systems are not polynomially bounded. (shrink)

A minimum voting age is defended as the most effective and least disrespectful means of ensuring all members of an electorate are sufficiently competent to vote. Whilst it may be reasonable to require competency from voters, a minimum voting age should be rejected because its view of competence is unreasonably controversial, it is incapable of defining a clear threshold of sufficiency and an alternative test is available which treats children more respectfully. This alternative is a procedural test for minimum electoral (...) competence. A procedural test for minimum electoral competence also succeeds in fulfilling adults’ duties to promote children’s rational and moral engagement with democracy. A minimum voting age should therefore be rejected, all things considered. A procedural test for minimum literacy and independent voting is the most justified means to ensure competency from voters and to promote the democratic agency of children. (shrink)

Adorno and Foucault are among the 20th century’s most renowned social critics but little work has been done to compare their ideas about the activity of critique. ‘Adorno, Foucault and Critique’ attempts to fill this lacuna. It takes as its starting point the Kantian legacy that informs Adorno’s and Foucault’s notions of critique, or their ‘ontologies of the present’, as Foucault calls them. Exploring the ontological foundations of critique, the article then addresses the principal objects of critique: domination and fascism. (...) It ends with a comparative account of the central aims of Adorno’s and Foucault’s critiques of western societies. (shrink)

Recently mereological hylomorphism, the theory in which form and matter are considered to be proper parts of objects, has become very important among contemporary metaphysicians. The present work aims to analyse and dismantle Bennett’s criticism regarding the existence of formal proper parts. To do this, I will start by presenting Koslicki’s mereological hylomorphism. Next, I will focus on Bennett’s critique which seeks to deny the existence of formal proper parts. Finally, I will analyse critically the Bennett’s criticism focusing on the (...) scenario of lump of clay and statue. I will show Bennett’s proposal is not explanatorily better than Koslicki’s hylomorphism because she needs to accept a counter-intuitive thesis. Therefore, we should prefer Koslicki’s mereological hylomorphism. (shrink)

Which famous twentieth-century philosopher instigated a revolution in philosophy, arguing that the philosopher’s business is not to advance general theories about reality, but rather to help release our thinking from the intellectual cramps produced by a misunderstanding of the forms of language? Wittgenstein? Wrong! according to John W. Cook. This revolution in philosophy actually had no author. Apparently, it arose through a misinterpretation of Wittgenstein’s later writings. In fact, Cook implies, Wittgenstein himself was not genuinely engaged in a (...) struggle with philosophical puzzles, but rather had an ontological theory up his sleeve: he was a conventional empiricist in the tradition of Berkeley, Ernst Mach, and Russell, though he happened to express himself so obscurely that some philosophers, believing themselves inspired by his writings, dreamed up the whole revolution by mistake, as it were. However, Cook is not arguing that the revolution should be canceled; rather he looks at Wittgenstein’s work from the standpoint of that accidental revolution, berating Wittgenstein, as it were, for not having thought to be a Wittgensteinian himself. (shrink)

Discussions of the object as a key to understanding central aspects of modern and contemporary art. Artists increasingly refer to "post-object-based" work while theorists engage with material artifacts in culture. A focus on "object-based" learning treats objects as vectors for dialogue across disciplines. Virtual imaging enables the object to be abstracted or circumvented, while immaterial forms of labor challenge materialist theories. This anthology surveys such reappraisals of what constitutes the "objectness" of production, with art as its focus. Among the topics (...) it examines are the relation of the object to subjectivity; distinctions between objects and things; the significance of the object's transition from inert mass to tool or artifact; and the meanings of the everyday in the found object, repetition in the replicated or multiple object, loss in the absent object, and abjection in the formless or degraded object. It also explores artistic positions that are anti-object; theories of the experimental, liminal or mental object; and the role of objects in performance. The object becomes a prism through which to reread contemporary art and better understand its recent past. Artists surveyed include Georges Adéagbo, Art in Ruins, Iain Baxter, Louise Bourgeois, Pavel Büchler, Lygia Clark, Claude Closky, Brian Collier, Jimmie Durham, Fischli & Weiss, Luca Frei, Meschac Gaba, Isa Genzken, Gruppe Geflecht, Eva Hesse, Mike Kelley, John Latham, Antje Majewski, Gustav Metzger, Cady Noland, Gabriel Orozco, Adrian Piper, Falke Pisano, Eva Rothschild, Aura Satz, Kenneth Snelson, Hito Steyerl, Josef Strau, Alina Szapocznikow, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Erwin Wurm Writers include Homi K. Bhabha, Jack Burnham, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Lynne Cooke, Gillo Dorfles, Jean Fisher, Ferreira Gullar, Charles Harrison, Paulo Herkenhoff, Julia Kristeva, Bruno Latour, Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger, Jean-François Lyotard, Lev Manovich, Ursula Meyer, Bruno Munari, Georges Perec, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Dieter Roelstraete, Howard Singerman, Nancy Spector, Marcus Steinweg, Anne Wagner, Gérard Wajcman, Slavoj Zizek. (shrink)

Achieving equity in international research is a pressing concern. Exploitation in any scenario, whether of human research participants, institutions, local communities, animals or the environment, raises the overarching question of how to avoid such exploitation. Agreed principles can be universally applied to research in any discipline or geographical area, whatever methodologies are employed. This chapter introduces a collection of case studies, presenting a range of up-to-date examples of exploitation in North-South research collaborations, in order to raise awareness of ethics dumping.

The classical measures of voting power are based on players' decisiveness or full causal efficacy in vote configurations or divisions. We design an alternative, recursive measure departing from this classical approach. We motivate the measure via an axiomatic characterisation based on reasonable axioms and by offering two complementary interpretations of its meaning: first, we interpret the measure to represent, not the player's probability of being decisive in a voting structure, but its expected probability of being decisive in a uniform random (...) walk from a vote configuration in the subset lattice (through which we represent the voting structure); and, second, we interpret it as representing a player's expected efficacy, thereby incorporating the notion of partial and not just full causal efficacy. We shore up our measure by demonstrating that it satisfies a set of postulates any reasonable voting measure should satisfy, namely, the iso-invariance, dummy, dominance, donation, minimum-power bloc, and quarrel postulates. (shrink)

Sometimes what we perceive appears other than it is. The term ‘illusion’ is often used to capture the broad variety of cases in which this occurs. But some of these cases are better described as cases of imaginative perception—cases in which what we perceive appears as we imagine it to be. I argue that imaginative perception is to be sharply contrasted with illusions variously conceived as cases of misleading appearance and cases of perceptual error. By removing the blanket term ‘illusion’ (...) from our description of such cases, we can better see the underlying complex of cognitive processes they involve. (shrink)

Reflections on, and analysis of, ethical issues facing military service in the United States.

The recent publications reported in 2022 reveal the possibility of obtaining mouse embryos without the need for egg or sperm. These ‘artificial embryos’ can recapitulate some stages of development ex utero – from neurulation to organogenesis – without implantation. Synthetic mouse embryos might serve as a valuable model to gain further insights into early developmental stages. Indeed, it is expected for these models to be replicated by employing human cells. This promising research raises ethical issues and expands the horizon of (...) ethics in regard to the development of the human embryo. From this point of view, we state some of the new open venues for bioethical research. (shrink)

Ours are Days of Decision and it's indispensable to transform our technics. For it, we must abandon the inherited conception of technics based on neutrality and autonomy. To this end, in this article we develop a socio-historical ontology for technics that argues: (a) To understand technics we have to take into consideration technical objects, handling, and the degree of guidance of the animal user. (b) Each technics is inseparable from its society. (c) The idea of a free use of technics (...) is illusory. There are always unexpected impacts and various uses of a given technics. (d) Technologies of the Capitalocene are imperial. (e) Technologies have acquired a destructive inertia and we have the obligation to understand technological development as a political phenomenon. (f) In order to go beyond the Capitalocene and advance towards Degrowth, we have to move from imperial technologies to humble technics. (shrink)

During the Winter of 2011 I visited SADAF and gave a series of talks based on the central chapters of my manuscript on the Yablo paradox. The following year, I visited again, and was pleased and honored to find out that Eduardo Barrio and six of his students had written ‘responses’ that addressed the claims and arguments found in the manuscript, as well as explored new directions in which to take the ideas and themes found there. These comments reflect my (...) thoughts on these responses (also collected in this issue), as well as my thoughts on further issues that arose during the symposium that was based on the papers and during the many hours I spent talking and working with Eduardo and his students. Durante el invierno de 2011, visité SADAF y dí una serie de conferencias sobre los capítulos centrales de mi manuscrito sobre la paradoja de Yablo. El año siguiente, visité Buenos aires nuevamente y tuve el placer y el honor de descubrir que Eduardo Barrio y seis de sus estudiantes habían escrito respuestas que abordan las afirmaciones y argumentos de mi manuscrito, además de explorar nuevas direcciones en las cuales considerar las ideas y temas encontrados allí. El presente trabajo refleja mis pensamientos sobre estas respuestas (también incluidas en este volumen), así como mis ideas sobre otras cuestiones que surgieron durante el simposio en el que se presentaron los artículos y en las muchas horas que nosotros discutimos y trabajamos con Eduardo y sus estudiantes. (shrink)

Philons Biographie Abrahams ist eine Werbeschrift fur das Judentum. Sie entstand vermutlich als literarisches Begleitprojekt zu Philons politischer Mission in Rom: In Alexandria waren Ausschreitungen gegen die judische Bevolkerung erfolgt, die Philon bei Kaiser Caligula zur Sprache bringen sollte. Der vorliegende Band fuhrt in diesen zeitgeschichtlichen Kontext ein und bietet den mit Anmerkungen versehenen Text der Schrift samt einer Neuubersetzung. Erlauternde Essays aus unterschiedlichen Fachperspektiven wurdigen Philon als Biograph und als Philosoph, ergrunden sein Tugendverstandnis und sein Frauenbild und beleuchten sein (...) Schriftverstandnis aus der Perspektive des antiken Orakelwesens. Abgerundet wird der Band durch einen Ausblick auf die Rezeption Abrahams im Islam, bei der sich bemerkenswerte Parallelen zu Philons allegorischen Auslegungen wiederfinden lassen. (shrink)

The question in philosophy of whether History is a Science is rather like the question in Politics of the expediency of a Channel Tunnel: it is one which provides a perennial subject for debate, there is no indication that it will ever be decided one way or the other, and it does not after all seem to matter much even if it never is decided; we can get along well enough by neglecting it altogether. One might argue indeed that the (...) dispute is not much more than a matter of words, of the intension and extension of terms. It is evident that the method and aim of the historian differ widely from those of the physicist, and on the other hand resemble closely those of the geologist. Why trouble to go splitting hairs? (shrink)

This book examines matters of religious freedom in Europe, considers the work of the European Court of Human Rights in this area, explores issues of multiculturalism and secularism in France, of women in Islam, and of Muslims in the West. The work presents legal analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on concepts such as laïcité, submission, equality and the role of the state in public education, amongst others. Through this book, the reader can visit inside a French public school located in (...) a low-income neighborhood just south of Paris and learn about the complex dynamics that led up to the passing of the 2004 law banning Muslim headscarves. The chapters bring to light the actors and cultures within the school that set the stage for the passing of the law and the political philosophy that supports it. School culture and philosophy are compared and contrasted to the thoughts and opinions of the teachers, administrators and students to gage how religious freedom and identity are understood. The book goes on to explore the issue of religious freedom at the European Court of Human Rights. The author argues that the right to religious freedom has been too narrowly understood and is being fenced in by static visions of Islam. This jeopardizes the idea of religious freedom more broadly. By becoming entangled with regional and domestic politics, the Court is neglecting important nuances and is jeopardizing secularism, pluralism and democracy. This is a highly readable and accessible book that will appeal to students and scholars of law, anthropology, religious studies and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Nuestro objetivo es examinar el tratamiento que ofreció Ludwig Wittgenstein en Sobre la certeza al problema escéptico del mundo externo, el cual consiste en la imposibilidad de conocer el mundo empírico. Reconstruiremos este problema a partir del argumento del sueño de René Descartes. Wittgenstein responde que la existencia de un mundo circundante al observador forma parte de las asunciones de los juegos del lenguaje, de modo que el problema es inadmisible. Evaluaremos el abordaje wittgensteiniano y lo entenderemos como una propuesta (...) contextualista que disuelve el problema mediante una reconsideración de sus presupuestos. La lectura contextualista que ofreceremos defiende que los estándares de atribución de verdad, significado y sentido son sensitivos a un contexto de enunciación, que en la obra wittgensteiniana toma el nombre de juego de lenguaje. (shrink)

Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) emphasizes the autonomy of objects, positing a withdrawn surplus of being that resists reduction to its parts or the sum of its parts. However, Harman’s framework faces conceptual tensions, including challenges in reconciling epistemological and ontological dimensions, explaining the formation of compound objects, and ascribing determinate features to experientially inaccessible objects. I argue that these issues arise mostly due to Harman’s over-commitment to a withdrawn substantial core of objects. To address these issues, I propose turning (...) to Jean-Luc Nancy’s post-phenomenological materialism and Alain Badiou’s mathematical realism. Both Nancy and Badiou offer alternatives to Harman’s substantialist core, emphasizing a local, contextually bound identity of things, which describes a restricted domain from the endlessly broader horizon of relations and situations in which each thing is or can be involved. They thus account for the surplus of being in each thing and consequently their ontological autonomy without recourse to a substantive grounding. I argue such a relational-friendly account of pluralism avoids the conceptual issues Harman’s OOO runs into. Lastly, I emphasize the value of OOO as an advocate for ontological equality that seeks to avoid the emergence of privileged actors or centralized discourse. This dialogue between Harman, Nancy, and Badiou thus seeks to advance the possibility of pluralistic ontologies within relational frameworks, combining the perspectives of OOO with post-phenomenological theories to explore the complexities of relationality without recourse to non-relational substrata. (shrink)

In this article we attempt to complicate traditional--and, we argue, limited and exclusionary--definitions of interdisciplinarity as the bringing into dialogue of established disciplines without questioning the parameters and practices of those disciplines. We propose that interdisciplinarity instead might mean teaching and learning among, between, and in the midst of those of innate or learned capacities--not only college faculty but also students and staff. To illustrate this more radical iteration of interdisciplinarity, we draw on a range of definitions of the key (...) terms, “discipline” and “faculty,” and we offer a case study of a workshop we co-facilitated in which we brought differently positioned individuals together to engage in the educational process and the production of knowledge. We hope that this discussion contributes to expanding the notions and practices of interdisciplinarity. (shrink)

Although climate change has become the dominant concern of the twenty-first century, global powers refuse to implement the changes necessary to reverse these trends. Instead, they have neoliberalized nature and climate change politics and discourse, and there are indications of a more virulent strain of capital accumulation on the horizon. Adrian Parr calls attention to the problematic socioeconomic conditions of neoliberal capitalism underpinning the world's environmental challenges, and she argues that, until we grasp the implications of neoliberalism's interference in (...) climate change talks and policy, humanity is on track to an irreversible crisis. Parr not only exposes the global failure to produce equitable political options for environmental regulation, but she also breaks down the dominant political paradigms hindering the discovery of viable alternatives. She highlights the neoliberalization of nature in the development of green technologies, land use, dietary habits, reproductive practices, consumption patterns, design strategies, and media. She dismisses the notion that the free market can solve debilitating environmental degradation and climate change as nothing more than a political ghost emptied of its collective aspirations. Decrying what she perceives as a failure of the human imagination and an impoverishment of political institutions, Parr ruminates on the nature of change and existence in the absence of a future. The sustainability movement, she contends, must engage more aggressively with the logic and cultural manifestations of consumer economics to take hold of a more transformative politics. If the economically powerful continue to monopolize the meaning of environmental change, she warns, new and more promising collective solutions will fail to take root. (shrink)

En aquest article pretenc fer una crítica al nihilisme mereològic, al·ludint que les expressions «simples agrupats en-tant-que-F» tenen unes conseqüències desastroses per als seus compromisos ontològics. Primer, explicaré què és el nihilisme mereològic -que és part de l’eliminativisme- el qual pretén negar l’existència dels objectes compostos (objectes amb parts pròpies) i l’estratègia de la paràfrasi: l’ús que fan de les expressions «simples agrupats en-tant-que-F» per referir-se als objectes ordinaris sense comprometre’s amb l’existència d’objectes compostos, però posaré l’èmfasi en aquells nihilistes (...) mereològics que pretenen explicar l’existència de les propietats emergents. Seguidament, presentaré una classe de crítiques, les de Bennett i Tallant, sobre l’ús d’aquesta estratègia per part dels nihilistes, i quina és la resposta crítica que ofereix Brenner sobre aquesta classe de crítica. Finalment, presentaré la meva crítica on mostraré que el nihilisme mereològic utilitzant l’estratègia de la paràfrasi s’està comprometent amb l’existència d’objectes compostos i que la crítica de Brenner no funciona amb la meva postura. -/- In this paper I intend to critique mereological nihilism, alluding that the expression «simples arranged F-wise» has disastrous consequences for its ontological commitments. First, I will explain what mereological nihilism is -which is part of Eliminativism- which tries to deny the existence of composite objects (objects with proper parts) and the Paraphrase Strategy: the use they make of the expression «simples arranged F-wise» to refer to ordinary objects without committing to the existence of composite objects, and I put the focus on the mereological nihilist that pretends to explain the existence of emergent properties. Second, I will present a kind of criticism, by Bennett and Tallant, of the use of this strategy by nihilism and which is the response of Brenner about this kind of criticism. Finally, I will present my criticism where I will show that nihilism by using the Paraphrase Strategy is committing itself to the existence of composite objects and that the Brenner’s critique does not work with my position. (shrink)