If, as many suppose, pornography changes people, a question arises as to how.1 One answer to this question offers a grand and noble vision. Inspired by the idea that pornography is speech, and inspired by a certain liberal ideal about the point of speech in political life, some theorists say that pornography contributes to that liberal ideal: pornography, even at its most violent and misogynistic, and even at its most harmful, is political speech that aims to express certain views about (...) the good life, 2aims to persuade its consumers of a certain political point of view—and to some extent succeeds in persuading them. Ronald Dworkin suggests that the pornographer contributes to the ‘moral environment, by expressing his political or social convictions or tastes or prejudices informally’, that pornography ‘seeks to deliver’ a ‘message’ , that it reflects the ‘opinion’ that ‘women are submissive, or enjoy being dominated, or should be treated as if they did’, that it is comparable to speech ‘advocating that women occupy inferior roles’.3 Pornography on this view is political speech that aims to persuade its listeners of the truth of certain ideas about women, and of course ‘the government must leave to the people the evaluation of ideas’.4 Another answer offers a vision that is not grand and noble, but thoroughly reductive. Pornography is not politically persuasive speech, but speech that works by a process of psychological conditioning. This view seems common enough in the social science literature. Consider, for example, this description of an early experiment, from a time that pre-dates contemporary political debate. (shrink)

This paper builds on existing research investigating CSR and ethical consumption within luxury contexts, and makes several contributions to the literature. First, it addresses existing knowledge gaps by exploring the ways in which consumers perform ethical luxury purchases of fine jewellery through interpretive research. Second, the paper is the first to examine such issues of consumer ethics by extending the application of theories of practice to a luxury product context, and by building on Magaudda’s :15–36, 2011) circuit of practice framework. (...) This is significant in that, to date, consumer research using practice theories has focused mainly on routine and habitual practices. Our findings and discussion provide an analysis of intentional and less intentional ethical consumer performances within the interconnected nexus of activities of consumers’ fine jewellery consumption practice, where meanings, understandings and intelligibility of social phenomena are worked through the various activities that shape such a practice. Finally, the paper concludes with significant managerial and policy-related implications, as our extended circuit of practice analysis conveys that if ethics and sustainability dimensions are to be embedded in fine jewellery consumption practice, they must first be made an intrinsic part of the nexus of the social and material environment of trading and consumption places. (shrink)

Among the available metaethical views, it would seem that moral realism—in particular moral naturalism—must explain the possibility of moral progress. We see this in the oft-used argument from disagreement against various moral realist views. My suggestion in this paper is that, surprisingly, metaethical constructivism has at least as pressing a need to explain moral progress. I take moral progress to be, minimally, the opportunity to access and to act in light of moral facts of the matter, whether they are mind-independent (...) or -dependent. For the metaethical constructivist, however, I add that moral progress ought also mean that agents come to be or could come to be motivated to act in light of the right kind of moral judgments. Together I take this to mean that, for all forms of constructivism, moral progress must be explained as a form of moral improvement, or agents aspiring to be better sorts of moral agents. In what moral improvement consists differs for various forms of constructivism. Here I distinguish between three different versions of metaethical constructivism: Humean constructivists as represented by Street, Kantian constitutivist constructivists as represented by Korsgaard, and constructivists about practical reason as represented by Carla Bagnoli. I conclude by showing that only constructivism as a view about practical reason can fully account for moral progress qua the opportunity for moral improvement. (shrink)

I consider an underappreciated problem for proponents of the Humean theory of motivation. Namely, it is unclear whether is it to be understood as a largely psychological or largely metaphysical theory. I show that the psychological interpretation of HTM will need to be modified in order to be a tenable view and, as it will turn out, the modifications required render it virtually philosophically empty. I then argue that the largely metaphysical interpretation is the only a plausible interpretation of HTM's (...) central claim that desires are necessary conditions for motivation. This interpretation also fits better with the important roles that HTM plays in both moral psychological and metaethical debates. (shrink)

There is currently a growing interest in the philosophy and political thought of Baruch de Spinoza following many years of comparative neglect, particularly within political philosophy. The focus of this paper is Spinoza's major work, the Ethics, and its relation to his political writings. It explores Spinoza's distinctive formulations of imagination and affect and considers some of the ways in which these impact upon his political thought, specifically via his reflections upon democracy and knowledge. The discussion draws particular attention to (...) the aporetic status of imagination and its tendency towards ambivalence. It argues that this dynamic account of imagination introduces provisionality and contingency into Spinoza's reflections upon politics that may, in turn, enrich discussions seeking to introduce an awareness of the affective resonances of communication and identification to democratic theory. (shrink)

Inspired by the Studies on authoritarian personality and based on contemporary research on authoritarianism in Brazil, we will analyze the construction of the idol aura surrounding former president Bolsonaro, which allowed the far right to be elected and remain in power until the last elections in 2022. We see his rise as mostly due to the digital violence that largely benefited his campaign and was directed against the block of left-wing candidates. So as to clarify this issue, we will revisit (...) the sociohistorical and psycho-political fundamentals of the antidemocratic and ethnocentric behaviors spurred by that leadership that became idolized. We will also outline an emancipatory, antiracist, culturally relevant and decolonial education, as a way to provide what Adorno regarded as being the antidote to the reemergence of a regressive barbarism. In the case of Brazil, barbarism refers to the remnants of the slave system implemented in the country for three and a half centuries, whose destructive potential was awakened under Bolsonaro’s government, given the latent antidemocratic and authoritarian tendencies in our society. (shrink)

In August 2024, The U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected Lykos Therapeutics, Inc.'s new drug application for midomafetamine with psychological intervention (MDMA-AT) to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Among the many issues raised during review was concern about a highly publicized case of alleged sexual misconduct by an unlicensed therapist during a Phase 2 study of MDMA and the potential risk of future abuse. This incident of misconduct, along with several other publicized cases of misconduct by guides, facilitators, and shaman (...) offering psychedelic retreats, has raised the question of whether physical contact is ever appropriate during psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT). Drawing on research about supportive touch in other clinical contexts and taking into consideration features of psychedelics that exacerbate the potential for harm associated with supportive touch, we advocate for a precautionary approach to harm-reduction while arguing that supportive touch ought not be thrown out whole-cloth. (shrink)

This Correspondence argues in response to Coolsaet et al. (2024) that there is an important role to play for stance-independent justice discussions that are not tied to specific social, political or critical perspectives. These can be valuable for climate research audiences, but also as a basis upon which to critically debate and research injustices.

In his critique of the extended mind hypothesis, Robert Rupert suggests that we have no reason to move from the claim that cognition is deeply embedded in the environment to the more radical claim that, in some cases, cognition itself extends into the environment. In this paper, I argue that we have strong normative reasons to prefer the more radical extended mind hypothesis to Rupert’s modest embedded mind hypothesis. I take an agnostic position on the metaphysical debate about the ultimate (...) nature and location of the mind, and instead argue in favor of the extended mind framework on the basis of its ability to better capture normative concerns about the way we evaluate the cognitive capacities of learning disabled individuals. In light of the commitments of the embedded and extended mind frameworks, defenders of the embedded mind framework are committed to conclusions about learning-disabled individuals that we have good normative reason to reject, whereas the extended mind framework avoids such problematic conclusions. Thus, if we find these normative concerns persuasive, we have good reason to prefer the extended mind position. (shrink)

Both in the U.S. and in France, inheritance is probably the main factor of wealth concentration among the richest part of the population, and of its intergenerational reproduction. In so far as wealth is an opportunity, a reform of inheritance tax could be a mean to ensure a fairer distribution of opportunities in the society. Many reforms of inheritance systems have been conceived at least since Bentham. The identification and the analysis of ethical properties of reforms as the ones designed (...) by Mill, Rignano, Solvay, Huet and Haslett show that the latter is certainly the one which most satisfies the requirements of an ethics of inheritance. (shrink)

Abstract:This article provides a novel interpretation of the so-called transition to self-consciousness in The Phenomenology of Spirit, where Hegel argues that the failure of the protagonist consciousness to formulate an understanding of the world in terms of forces and laws necessitates the shift to an investigation of its own self-conscious subjectivity. The author argues that we can make sense of the transition by attending to Hegel's account of the metaphysical structure of forces and laws, on the one hand, and the (...) structure of self-consciousness, on the other. Following this approach, she argues that the transition represents the realization by the protagonist consciousness that the object of phenomenological inquiry must be metaphysically self-determining (or "infinite," in Hegel's terminology). The standpoint of self-consciousness accordingly emerges because the protagonist consciousness takes itself qua subject to exhibit the requisite self-determining structure. In addition to making sense of the transition to self-consciousness, this line of argumentation illuminates Hegel's subsequent focus on the activity of "desire.". (shrink)

Wijdicks and colleagues1 recently presented the Full Outline of UnResponsiveness (FOUR) scale as an alternative to the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS)2 in the evaluation of consciousness in severely brain-damaged patients. They studied 120 patients in an intensive care setting (mainly neuro-intensive care) and claimed that “the FOUR score detects a locked-in syndrome, as well as the presence of a vegetative state.”1 We fully agree that the FOUR is advantageous in identifying locked-in patients given that it specifically tests for eye movements (...) or blinking on command. This is welcomed given that misdiagnosis of the locked-in syndrome has been shown to occur in more than half of the cases (see Laureys and colleagues3 for review). As for the diagnosis of the vegetative state, the scale explicitly tests for visual pursuit, and hence can disentangle the vegetative state from the minimally conscious state (MCS). The diagnostic criteria for MCS have been proposed4 only recently, but Wijdicks and colleagues1 do not mention the existence of this clinical entity in their article. As for the vegetative state, MCS can be encountered in the acute or subacute setting as a transitional state on the way to further recovery, or it can be a more chronic or even permanent condition. The MCS refers to patients showing inconsistent, albeit clearly discernible, minimal behavioral evidence of consciousness (eg, localization of noxious stimuli, eye fixation or tracking, reproducible movement to command, or nonfunctional verbalization).4 The FOUR scale does not test for all of the behavioral criteria required to diagnose MCS.4 It is known from the literature (see Majerus and colleagues5 for review) that about a third of patients diagnosed with vegetative state are actually in MCS, and this misdiagnosis can lead to major clinical, therapeutic, and ethical consequences. We tested the ability of the newly proposed FOUR scale to correctly diagnose the vegetative state in an acute (intensive care and neurology ward) and chronic (neurorehabilitation) setting.. (shrink)

Este artigo pretende examinar os primeiros parágrafos do capítulo 4 do _ Tratado teológico-político _ de Espinosa para compreender o conceito espinosano de Lei, com especial interesse nas noções de lei divina e lei humana. A análise parte do sentido absoluto de lei, como determinação necessária, que se divide em leis dependentes da necessidade da natureza da coisa e leis dependentes da decisão humana, e mostrará como o segundo tipo de lei é ontologicamente absorvido pelo primeiro, ao mesmo tempo em (...) que guarda sua importância do ponto de vista imaginário. (shrink)

he study revisits "civilization" in the context of globalization, analyzing its applicability and potential to mask cultural differences. It specifically contrasts the Western n o t i o n , a n c h o r e d i n c i t i z e n s h i p a n d environmental mastery, with the ancient Chinese "wenming" that signifies enlightenment and social harmony. "Civilization" stresses progress of science and technology, along with the process of globalization. "Wenming" (...) draws from the Book of Chamges' principles, stressing the importance of ritual propriety and family over individualism, and "hé ér bù tóng" or "harmony without uniformity." This perspective promotes unity while respecting individuality. The research suggests that integrating ancient Chinese philosophy could enhance global cooperation by acknowledging the depth of cultural heritage and the importance of diverse societal values. (shrink)

In the 1990s, Franklin Leopoldo e Silva wrote several articles on the question of history from the Pascalian point of view. This article intends to resume these texts, showing how they present a complex and structured view on the subject. Reflecting on Pascal’s theological discussions, Leopoldo e Silva shows us how the French philosopher paves the way for a renewed conception of historicity.

L’article explore les liens entre l’impermanence, la pensée bouddhique et taoïste, et l’esthétique Wabi-Sabi, en soulignant le concept unificateur du mouvement et son rôle dans l’illustration de la fluidité et de la transformation de la vie. L’analyse porte sur la manière dont le mouvement fonctionne comme un principe unificateur, mettant en évidence la fluidité, la transformation et la croissance qui caractérisent l’existence. Cette perspective s’appuie sur les principes taoïstes et bouddhistes, qui insistent sur l’acceptation de la réalité dans sa forme (...) la plus authentique et le détachement des attaches matérielles—révélant ainsi la beauté de l’imperfection et de la simplicité. En adoptant ce point de vue, nous sommes incités à nous engager pleinement dans notre environnement, à valoriser le caractère transitoire de chaque instant et à accueillir le changement comme une s o u r c e d e transformation. (shrink)

Whilst the concept of the subject has been called into question by many diverse approaches within contemporary political and social theory, there remains a focus upon agency, now attributable to reformulated subjectivities or assemblages. I query the persistence of this grammar of agency and ask whether politics can do without a ‘scene of the subject’. Spinoza’s philosophy, in particular, his conception of conatus, has inspired and offered some basis for rethinking agency. I examine two such prominent positions and argue that (...) ultimately neither captures the political promise of Spinoza’s philosophy. Configuring a concept of morphology to analyse this scene, my argument detaches the conatus from a narrow focus upon human desire, and focuses attention upon the scene of the subject as it folded into a wider complex body. My approach also returns a study of power to the discussion: the conatus is the power to persist, but it is also a differential force and site of conflict. By placing the spotlight on the scene of subjectivity in this way, the contemporary political theorist avoids the false antinomy between agency and structure, whilst continuing to track the production and composition of subjectivity in new political forms. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é explorar a noção de liberdade enquanto parte ontologicamente intransferível do direito natural humano. Não estamos falando da plena liberdade do sábio, que poucos têm de maneira prevalente, mas de uma liberdade de pensar imaginativamente, conforme seu próprio engenho, sua própria índole, e não apenas conforme o engenho do governante, ainda que este tenha o poder de definir o que é justo e piedoso. Examinaremos as bases ontológicas deste tipo de liberdade, bem como suas consequências políticas (...) retratadas no capítulo final do Tratado Teológico-político. Esta liberdade de opinar, decorrência necessária da natureza humana, é acompanhada da exigência de compartilhar as opiniões com os outros, exigência tanto maior quanto maior é a virtude do indivíduo. Desse modo, conforme afetos ativos embrionários operam no ânimo, a parte intransferível dessa liberdade amplia-se num movimento virtuoso que limita o poder do governante de reprimir a expressão pública das opiniões. (shrink)

Trata-se de uma resenha sobre a tradução da obra Tratado da Emeneda do Intelecto, de Espinosa.

O objetivo deste artigo é comparar a maneira como Pascal trata das relações entre ceticismo e dogmatismo em duas de suas principais obras, os Pensamentos e Conversa com o Senhor de Sacy, as quais, embora não conflitantes, trazem uma relevante mudança de pontos de vista. A Conversa aborda o debate ceticismo/dogmatismo diretamente pelo ângulo moral, de modo que os riscos morais para os leitores serão o critério fundamental de avaliação das duas filosofias. É igualmente do ponto de vista moral que (...) Epiteto e Montaigne, representantes do dogmatismo e do ceticismo, serão considerados inconciliáveis, visto que a aniquilação recíproca de vícios e virtudes impossibilita a constituição de uma moral perfeita. Nos Pensamentos, o ponto de vista assumido é o da teoria do conhecimento, ainda que se termine o embate no mesmo impasse moral da Conversa. A diferença mais importante, porém, é que os Pensamentos trazem o embate para o interior da natureza humana. Ambas as obras concordam em apontar ao apontar a religião cristã como fonte de explicação para os paradoxos da condição humana. (shrink)

Este artigo pretende expor a estrutura argumentativa do famoso fragmento pascaliano sobre a aposta, cujo intuito principal é mostrar a maior razoabilidade da vida do cristão em comparação com a do não cristão. Partindo da indemonstrabilidade da existência ou inexistência de Deus, o fragmento desenvolve uma argumentação racionalmente aceitável para justificar que se aposte no incerto, sobretudo quando o infinito está em jogo.

O problema da corporalidade em Leibniz se vincula necessariamente à discussão sobre o estatuto da matéria em uma Metafísica cuja base são as mônadas imateriais. Veremos que, neste contexto, o material deverá ser fenomênico, mas nem por isso ilusório. O objetivo deste trabalho é mostrar como o campo fenomênico, cujo caso exemplar é o corpo, pode ganhar um suporte metafísico e racionalmente justificado, constituindo o que Leibniz chama de fenômenos bem fundados. Para tal, deverá ser feito um exame cuidadoso da (...) natureza das Forças no pensamento leibniziano e de como elas apresentam o vínculo procurado entre Física e Metafísica. Leibniz on Phenomenon and CorporalityThe problem of corporality in Leibniz is necessarily attached to the discussion on the nature of matter in a Metaphysics whose basis are the immaterial monads. We will see that, in this context, although the material must be phenomenic, it is not necessarily ilusory. The aim of this paper is to show how the phenomenic domain, whose exemplar case is the body, may be metaphysically founded and rationally justifyed, constituting what Leibniz calls well founded phenomena. In order to do it, it is necessary to examine Leibniz's conception of the nature of the Forces and how they could present the link between Physics and Metaphysics. (shrink)

Resenha da tradução da Ética, de Baruch de Espinosa, da Editora Relógio d'Água.

Parmi les nombreuses réflexions consacrées à l’espace de la ville et à sa condition contemporaine, certaines considèrent que les relations à l’intérieur des villes sont décisives pour penser aujourd’hui le fonctionnement social. Ces relations, en tant que productrices de signification, sont l’objet des sciences du langage, en particulier lorsque celles-ci estiment que le sens se constitue socialement et historiquement. Les cinq textes réunis ici se rattachent au thème de recherche Savoir urba..

In this paper, Charles Mills discusses what he calls “white ignorance”, developing one of the main themes of his 1997 book, The Racial Contract. His discussion is concerned with the idea of a cognitive disadvantage based on membership in a social group, which is not strange to the radical philosophical tradition, and that has been explored with more vigor in the recent Social Epistemology, in debates about epistemic injustices, silencing, willful ignorance, cognitive biases, epistemological standpoints, etc. Mills argues for an (...) “Epistemology of the white ignorance”, a racially and socially situated epistemology, which contraposes itself, in a great extent, to the individualistic tendencies of the traditional epistemological work, while conserving the interests in objectivity and truth of this work. (shrink)

In their article, “Ethical Issues in Using Behavior Contracts to Manage the “Difficult’ Patient and Family,” Autumn Fiester and Chase Yuan (2023) identify six ethical concerns regarding the specifi...

Trata-da resenha do livro Infini et disproportion chez Pascal, de João Cortese.

Fichte’s Ethical Thought follows a format familiar to those who have read Allen Wood’s books on the ethical thought of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel: Wood integrates Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s work into topical chapters, each discussing an important component of Fichte’s ethical system. The text he focuses on, of course, is Fichte’s 1798 System of Ethics, but Fichte scholars will likely be pleased to find that Wood discusses a wide range of Fichte’s Jena-era writings. Wood makes use of (...) Addresses to the German Nation, The Closed Commercial State, and earlier works such as Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation, especially in the final two chapters, which cover Fichte’s thought on public life, the... (shrink)

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed a change in the perception of the arts and of philosophy. In the arts this transition occurred around 1800, with, for instance, the breakdown of Vitruvianism in architecture, while in philosophy the foundationalism of which Descartes and Spinoza were paradigmatic representatives, which presumed that philosophy and the sciences possessed a method of ensuring the demonstration of truths, was undermined by the idea, asserted by Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, that there exist alternative styles of enquiry among (...) which a choice is open. The essays in this book examine the circumstances, features, and consequences of this historical transition, exploring in particular new aspects and instances of the inter-relatedness of content and its formal representation in both the arts and philosophy. (shrink)

The German rediscovery of messianism in the first decade of the twentieth century gave voice to a new way of thinking about the utopian future that privileged redemption in its denunciation of progressivist notions of Enlightenment rationality. Profoundly uneasy with the growing anti-liberal and anti-Semitic upper classes of the Weimar Republic, the German-Jewish “generation of 1914” drew inspiration from the figure of the Messiah in answer to the nineteenth-century utopian-socialist dream of scientific rationality. “Messianism of our era,” as Gershom Scholem (...) wrote, “proves its immense force precisely in this form of the revolutionary apocalypse, and no longer in the form…. (shrink)

Experience offers a reading experience like no other. A heat-sensitive cover by Olafur Eliasson reveals words, colors, and a drawing when touched by human hands. Endpapers designed by Carsten Holler are printed in ink containing carefully calibrated quantities of the synthesized human pheromones estratetraenol and androstadienone, evoking the suggestibility of human desire. The margins and edges of the book are designed by Tauba Auerbach in complementary colors that create a dynamically shifting effect when the book is shifted or closed. When (...) the book is opened, bookmarks cascade from the center, emerging from spider web prints by Tomas Saraceno. Experience produces experience while bringing the concept itself into relief as an object of contemplation. The sensory experience of the book as a physical object resonates with the intellectual experience of the book as a container of ideas. Experience convenes a conversation with artists, musicians, philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and neuroscientists, each of whom explores aspects of sensorial and cultural realms of experience. The texts include new essays written for this volume and classic texts by such figures as William James and Michel Foucault -- Provided by the publisher. (shrink)