Researchers from diverse disciplines, including organismal and cellular physiology, sports science, human nutrition, evolution and ecology, have sought to understand the causes and consequences of the surprising variation in metabolic rate found among and within individual animals of the same species. Research in this area has been hampered by differences in approach, terminology and methodology, and the context in which measurements are made. Recent advances provide important opportunities to identify and address the key questions in the field. By bringing together (...) researchers from different areas of biology and biomedicine, we describe and evaluate these developments and the insights they could yield, highlighting the need for more standardisation across disciplines. We conclude with a list of important questions that can now be addressed by developing a common conceptual and methodological toolkit for studies on metabolic variation in animals. (shrink)

This article engages with Michel Foucault’s idea of confession as the central Christian strategy of subjection or subjectivation and the link he proposes between confession and obedience. The article also wishes to show how confession can become counter-conduct. I apply Foucault’s conceptions to early modern Lutheran confessionalism, elucidating how the confessional apparatus of the orthodox Lutheranism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Sweden strived to mold obedient subjects who are able to conduct themselves. I also examine the transformation and overthrow of these (...) subjectivation techniques in Radical Pietism, analyzing a dissident confession of faith by the Radical Pietist Peter Schaefer, who exemplifies perfect subjection, constituting himself as a perfectly obedient subject, and yet a failure of subjectivation in the sense of submission, insofar as for him, obedience becomes a strategy of empowerment. (shrink)

In an engineering writing course whose theme is climate change and engineering, I foreground climate change as an ethical problem. At the end of the semester, I ask students to compare their attitudes toward climate change from when they began the course to their attitudes at the end. Some report that, as a result of knowing more about the difficulty and scale of the problem, they have become more pessimistic about our ability to solve it. Climate change despair has been (...) studied from several disciplinary perspectives. Here, I approach the issue from an ethical perspective. My question is, how should I address students’ affective responses to climate change? After providing background on the course and the students’ attitudes, I review the literature on the ethics of climate change despair, hope, and false hope. I then argue for a pedagogy that guides students toward a critical hope and engineering praxis. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to briefly describe the current participation of Pentecostals in the Brazilian public sphere. I use the term tentative because it is not easy to discuss the Brazilian Religious Field and its power relations, controversies and tensions. In fact, in recent years, Pentecostal groups have shown themselves to be more visible, mainly due to social networks and communication networks on TV, radio and internet. This article is an effort to present this context based on the problem: (...) How could Christians, especially evangelicals, support a Federal Government that defends destructive and non-social policies? How could Pentecostal believers reaffirm social inequality, through ethnic-racial hatred, the denial of gender diversity and the subjection of women to the authority of men? To answer these questions, I describe part of the debate proposed by Brazilian literature on Pentecostalism and present some of the main evangelical leaders aligned with the conservative agenda of the current federal government. Finally, I declare that the literalist hermeneutics that goes back to the texts of the Hebrew Bible do legitimate and authorizes policies of social inequality and violence against communities in situations of social and economic vulnerability. (shrink)

Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture explores the multifaceted moral meanings allocated to non-human suffering in contemporary Western culture.

The book is an introduction to key concepts of Indian Philosophy, seen from the perspective of the influential school of Pr?bh?kara M?m??s? (flourished from the 7th until the 20th c. AD). It includes the edition and translation of R?m?nuj?c?rya's ??straprameyapariccheda.

New genetic technologies promise to generate valuable insights into the aetiology of several psychiatric conditions, as well as a wider range of human and animal behaviours. Advances in the neurosciences and the application of new brain imaging techniques offer a way of integrating DNA analysis with studies that are looking at other biological markers of behaviour. While candidate 'genes for' certain conditions, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, are said to be 'un-discovered' at a faster rate than they are discovered, many (...) studies are being conducted on personality traits such as aggressiveness and anti-social traits. The clinical applicability and implications of these studies are often discussed within the scientific community. However, little attention has so far been paid to their possible policy implications in relation to criminality management and to Criminal Law itself. Similarly, the related ethical issues arising in the field of crime control, and the tensions between enhancing security for society and protecting civil liberties, are currently under-explored. This paper investigates these ethical issues by focusing on the views of those professionals – including judges, lawyers, probation officers and social workers – who work with individuals 'deemed at risk' of violent and aggressive behaviours. It also discusses and problematizes mainstream rhetoric and arguments around the notion of 'risky individuals'. (shrink)

Este texto é a primeira parte do terceiro capítulo de minha tese de doutoramento - MÁRIO DE ANDRADE, PLURAL . Aí, tenta-se a produção de um biografema à maneira de Roland Barthes, de quem é a epígrafe do capítulo. O biografema é uma livre-produção textual na medida em que não deriva de significado , mas, enfatizando imagens, cenas, gestos, fragmentos textuais, pulsões, opera significancias. O biografema não dispensa a biografia - usa-a, desmembra-a, desgasta-a. Disseminação, o biografema não hesita em lançar (...) mão de todos os operadores de linguagem à disposição. Se a biografia opera com dados, instituindo a verossimilhança no biografado, o biografema retém o arbitrário na produção do ser-de-tinta que imprime no papel.Ce texte est une partie du troisième chapitre de mon Doctorat de 3 ème Cycle - Mário de Andrade: Pluriel . Il s'agit d'un essai de production d'un biographème, à la façon de Roland Barthes. Le biographème c'est de la production textuelle à la dérive des signifiants. Ne s'inquiétant point de la vérité, le biographème joue à la vraisemblance tout en la déjouant. Dissémination, un biographème n'hesite pas à mètre en oeuvre tous les opérateurs de langage a sa portée. Agissant de la sorte, il fait usage de la biographie, Técartelle en la rendant autre à l'écart Si la biographie travaille avec des faits en vue de l'établissement du vraisemblable du biographe, le biographème retient l'arbitraire de la production de cet "être-en-encre" qu'il imprime sur le papier. Son enjeu c'est donc le jeu des images, des scènes, des gestes, des fragments textuels, des pulsions, c'est-à-dire, des signifiances. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article examines the medical and political discussions regarding a controversial medicinal bark from Ecuador – cundurango – that was actively sponsored by the Ecuadorian government as a new botanical cure for cancer in the late nineteenth century United States and elsewhere. The article focuses on the commercial and diplomatic interests behind the public discussion and advertising techniques of this drug. It argues that diverse elements – including the struggle for positioning scientific societies and the disapproval of the capacities of (...) Ecuadorian doctors, US abolitionist history, regional and local political struggles – played a role in the quackery accusations against cundurango and its promoters. The development and international trade of this remedy offer interesting insights into the global history of drugs, particularly how medical knowledge was challenged during a period when scientific medicine was struggling for hegemony. It explores how newspapers expanded “the public interest” in a possible cancer cure. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the significance of mood for a philosophical approach to emotion. Are moods problematic because they constrain us in an affective cage? Or do they rather give us access to the world? The starting point for this investigation is the work of Martin Heidegger: I analyze what he defines as vorweltlich arguing that this term refers to the emotional dimension of human existence, in particular, to mood, or, in Heideggerian terms, Stimmung. Human existence is not just (...) a neutral being-there but a being-affected, a being-in-a-mood. I then move on to consider the role of mood in relation to the concept of transcendence, providing an analysis of two main source of inspiration in Heidegger’s thought: Augustine and Aristotle. This allows us to distinguish three aspects of Stimmung : Stimmung as openness to the world, Stimmung as teleological movement, and Stimmung as event of ontological difference. In the final section, I discuss the contribution of these aspects of Heidegger’s thought to the contemporary debate on emotions. (shrink)

Most moral theorists agree that it is one thing to believe that someone has slighted you and another to resent her for the insult; one thing to believe that someone did you a favor and another to feel gratitude toward her for her kindness. While all of these ways of responding to another's conduct are forms of moral appraisal, the reactive attitudes are said to 'go beyond' beliefs in some way. We think this claim is adequately explained only when we (...) take seriously the fact that reactive attitudes are emotions. In this paper, we appeal to insights of the emotions literature to highlight one key way in which reactive attitudes go beyond beliefs: beliefs about a person and her morally significant conduct merely ascribe to the person the property of having performed a morally significant action, while reactive attitudes are ways of experiencing that person as having performed a morally significant action. We then suggest that appreciating this is a crucial first step toward understanding why reactive emotions play roles in our practices around responsibility that beliefs do not. (shrink)

L’arte contemporanea è caleidoscopica: può catapultarci in ambienti complessi o minimali richiedendo la nostra attiva partecipazione, ancorarsi a luoghi particolari, porci di fronte a opere apparentemente indistinguibili da oggetti ed eventi della vita quotidiana, appropriarsi illegalmente degli spazi pubblici, e così via. Questo volume muove dalla premessa che uno dei compiti della filosofia dell’arte sia prestare attenzione a specifiche pratiche artistiche e a teorie sull’arte avanzate in altri ambiti di ricerca, per poi organizzare in maniera perspicua la molteplicità dei dati (...) raccolti. I filosofi possono così costruire teorie quanto più generali possibile per cercare di spiegare ciò che emerge da tali dati. Le ricerche qui presentate si concentrano su alcuni fenomeni, accuratamente scelti nell’ampio panorama dell’arte contemporanea: l’installation art e i suoi rapporti con l’installazione espositiva, l’arte sito-specifica e la sua appartenenza alla più ampia tradizione dell’arte situata, il ruolo delle idee nell’arte concettuale e il carattere sovversivo della street art. Sfruttando l’efficacia esplicativa del concetto di medium artistico, nonché della individuazione di forme e generi d’arte, le analisi qui presentate indagano le ragioni per cui in queste pratiche artistiche sono centrali l’esperienza dello spazio, l’interazione fra opere e pubblico, i luoghi d’installazione delle opere e gli oggetti come portatori di significati. (shrink)

How do firms make sense of creating shared value projects? In their sense-making processes, do they extend the meaning spectrum to include human rights? What are the dominant cognitive frames through which firms make sense of CSV projects, and are some frames more likely to have transformative power? We pose these questions in the context of small-scale firms in a low-to-middle income country—a context where CSV policies have been promoted extensively over the last decade in the expectation of improved economic (...) competitiveness, growth, and sustainable development processes. We employ a grounded theory approach to identify three dominant cognitive frames used by our respondents to make sense of CSV. The most prevalent frame prioritizes economic over social and environmental goals, and considers social, environmental, and human rights benefits to trickle down from economic growth and wealth generation. In the second frame, economic actors follow a win–win logic according to which environmental sustainability is pursued only if there are clear and foreseeable economic payoffs. The third frame is a niche that emphasizes the attainment of certain human rights goals, despite a perceived lack of immediate economic returns. Our work casts doubt on the capacity of CSV projects to stimulate sustainable development processes without radically changing entrepreneurs’ cognitive frames from growth first to humanizing the business. (shrink)

Empathy has become a common point of debate in moral psychology. Recent developments in psychiatry, neurosciences and social psychology have led to the revival of sentimentalism, and the ‘empathy thesis’ has suggested that affective empathy, in particular, is a necessary criterion of moral agency. The case of psychopaths – individuals incapable of affective empathy and moral agency, yet capable of rationality – has been utilised in support of this case. Critics, however, have been vocal. They have asserted that the case (...) of autism proves the empathy thesis wrong; that psychopathy centres on rational rather than empathic limitations; that empathy is not relevant to many common normative behaviours; and that rationality is required when empathy fails. The present paper analyses these four criticisms. It will be claimed that they each face severe difficulties, and that moral agency ought to be approached via a multi-tier model, with affective empathy as a baseline. (shrink)

Empathy is a term used increasingly both in moral theory and animal ethics. Yet, its precise meaning is often left unexplored. The book aims to tackle this by clarifying the different and even contradictory ways in which “empathy” can be defined.

In this paper, with reference to Vito Acconci’s Following Piece (1969) and Sophie Calle’s Take care of yourself (2007), I show that some works of conceptual art rely on exemplification to convey ideas, and I defend the following claims about those works. In the first place, I argue that the kinds of events and of objects they present us with are relevant for appreciating the views the works convey. In the second place, siding with Elisabeth Schellekens (2007) and Peter Goldie (...) (2007), I argue, contra James Young (2001), that those artworks can yield experiential knowledge. In the third place, I argue that those artworks also possess probatory value. Finally, I maintain that those artworks can be valuable instruments for the education of the emotions. (shrink)

The present Festschrift was born as a tribute to the scientific production of Rémi Brague. This study collects the interventions of several thinkers, with different scientific profiles, who, fond of reality, have reflected on, and been in dialogue with his thought. Brague has explored many spheres: anthropology, metaphysics, religion, history of religions, aesthetics, ethics, politics, and cosmology – where he recalled those anchors in the sky where mankind throws its roots. We have decided to entitle this collection Europa cura te (...) ipsam! inspired by on the admonition of the famous Medice cura te ipsum. As Brague has repeatedly obser- ved, and recently with no little pessimism, it is now up to Europeans to recover their history and look to their future. We hope that the present work can be a stimulus for today’s thinkers and for generations to come, certain that the search for truth is an endless inquiry where harmony and cooperation among thinkers constitute progress. -/- Contributors: Leonardo Allodi, Rafael Alvira, Jean Baechler, Damiano Bondi, Thomas Buchheim, Virgil Ciomos, Rocio Daga Portillo, Marco Damonte, Chantal Delsol, Phil Devine, Thérèse-Anne Druart, Travis Dumsday, David C. Flatto, Michal Gierycz, Elisa Grimi, John F. X. Knasas, Hans Maier, Sante Maletta, Fr Antonio Malo, Fr Giulio Maspero, Ilaria Vigorelli, Fr Piotr Mazurkiewicz, Isabelle Moulin, José Ignacio Gómez Murillo, Maurits Potappel, John M. Rist, H. Em. Card. Angelo Scola, Hans Seitschek, Wilhelm Vossenkuhl. (shrink)

The Belmont Report’s three foundational ethical principles—respect for persons, beneficence, and justice—have shaped regulation, practice, and our collective thinking about research with human beings in the United States for over 40 years. While it has proven remarkably adaptable, Belmont’s framework is a product of a specific time and historical context. Both the research enterprise and society at large have changed in significant ways since its creation. For example, the last four decades have seen a general democratization of knowledge production, increasing (...) skepticism of authority and expertise, and growing demands that institutions of power be more transparent about their activities so they can be better held to account. Within the research enterprise, the emergence of community engaged- and patient-centered research reflects these changes. This chapter examines the application of Belmont’s framework to stakeholder-engaged research, both illuminating its flexibilities and identifying its limitations, in terms of the values, norms, and expectations that are central to stakeholder-engaged research but unaccounted for by Belmont. (shrink)

Animal ethics committees (AECs) appeal to utilitarian principles in their justification of animal experiments. Although AECs do not grant rights to animals, they do accept that animals have moral standing and should not be unnecessarily harmed. Although many appeal to utilitarian arguments in the justification of animal experiments, I argue that AECs routinely fall short of the requirements needed for such justification in a variety of ways. I argue that taking the moral status of animals seriously—even if this falls short (...) of granting rights to animals—should lead to a thorough revision or complete elimination of many of the current practices in animal experimentation. (shrink)

Apoyado en dos afirmaciones de Lacan respecto al olvido, una en 1954 y otra en 1970, junto con la aseveración de Allouch de que el psicoanálisis se había constituido en una práctica de dar caza al recuerdo, cuando antes que otra cosa se trataba de olvidar, este artículo se propone plantear el problema del olvido en tres direcciones: a) Retomando dos tipos de olvido que permiten pensar una forma radical de olvido: olvido del olvido. b) Relacionando olvido y repetición, al (...) revisar, de acuerdo con Lacan, el carácter demoníaco que se le atribuye a esta última, y c) a través de un recorrido por autores que han fijado su atención en el olvido, señalando la importancia del olvido como medio de recuperación de sí mismo pero también de un olvido de sí terapéutico. (shrink)

McTaggart’s Paradox has been considered a special case of Lewis’s Problem of Temporary Intrinsics (see Craig (1998), Rea (2003) and Rettler (2012)). I argue instead that the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics cannot simply be applied to the Problem of the passage of time and therefore that McTaggart’s Paradox cannot be a special case of the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics. This observation is relevant in order to point out the difference between the change in objects or events over time (i.e. the (...) subject of Lewis’s Problem) and the change (or passage) of time (i.e. the subject of McTaggart’s Paradox). (shrink)

Alyssa DeBlasio’s book The Filmmaker's philosopher - Merab Mamardashvili and Russian cinema presents Merab Mamardashvili’s philosophy seen through the eyes of film directors who were directly or indirectly influenced by his lectures. With a detailed analysis of eight films, the book brings together a generation of filmmakers who translated Mamardashvili’s message into cinematic language, performing an experiment through which we might see an alternative mode of thought at work. By showing how Mamardashvili’s considerations of metaphysical, epistemological and moral nature shine (...) through in the films described, DeBlasio touches upon one of the pillars of Mamardashvili’s thought: art is, together with philosophy, a privileged language for recording each own’s experience of the field of consciousness. (shrink)

The climate crisis is an enormous challenge for contemporary societies. Yet, public discussions on it often lead to anger, mocking, denial and other defensive behaviours, one prominent example of which is the reception met by the climate advocate Greta Thunberg. The paper approaches this curious phenomenon via shame. It argues that the very idea of anthropogenic climate change invites feelings of human failure and thereby may also entice shame. The notion of “climate shame” is introduced and distinguished from “climate guilt”. (...) Whereas climate guilt prioritises the flourishing of the environment and is focused on actions and morality, climate shame is concerned with human identity and selfhood. The paper then explores whether shame is a morally destructive or constructive emotion. Making use of both psychological and philosophical literature on shame, it argues that although shame faces many challenges that question its usefulness in moral pedagogy, these challenges can be met with “moral maturity”—moreover, following a utilitarian approach, the overall benefits of climate shame can justify its costs to individuals. My argument is that climate shame holds the potential of being a highly effective moral psychological method of persuasion, capable of inviting wholesale critical reflection on current, environmentally damaging practices and cultivation of more virtuous ways of co-existing with the rest of the natural world and other species. (shrink)

The disclosure of prognosis to terminally ill patients has emerged as a recent concern given greater demands for patient involvement in medical decision‐making in the United States. As part of the informed consent process, American physicians are legally and ethically obligated to provide information to such patients about the risks, benefits, and alternatives of all available treatment options including the use of experimental therapies. Although not legally required, the disclosure of a terminal prognosis is ethically justified because it upholds the (...) principle of self‐determination and enables patients to make treatment decisions consistent with their life goals. To understand oncologists’ attitudes about disclosing prognostic information to cancer patients with advanced disease, we interviewed fourteen oncologists and conducted one focus group of medical fellows. Although oncologists reported to disclose prognosis in terms of cancer not being curable, they tend to avoid using percentages to convey prognosis. Oncologists’ reported reluctance to disclosing prognosis was conveyed through the use of metaphors depicting the perceived violent impact of such information on patients. Oncologists’ reluctance to disclose prognosis and preserve patient hope are held in check by their need to ensure that patients have ‘realistic expectations’ about therapy. We discuss these data in light of the cultural, ethical, and legal dimensions of prognosis disclosure, patient hope and the doctor–patient relationship, and recommend ways to enhance the communication process. (shrink)

Emotional information captures attention due to privileged processing. Consequently, performance in cognitive tasks declines. Therefore, shielding current goals fro...

This book examines the current dynamic and momentous development of European security policy. In doing so, it provides an important and original contribution to both practical philosophy and to the fields of security studies and European studies. Using concrete analyses and by offering possible solutions to certain problems, the book develops an approach that is embedded in reality and which, at the same time, insists on theory and normativity. It focuses on the characteristics of new security technologies and ways in (...) which security is understood as well as their influence on the ‘Copernican Revolution’ of the modern age, through which individuals and the protection of their fundamental rights have become the focus of political legitimation. (shrink)

The Mīmā ṃ sā school of Indian philosophy elaborated complex ways of interpreting the prescriptive portions of the Vedic sacred texts. The present article is the result of the collaboration of a group of scholars of logic, computer science, European philosophy and Indian philosophy and aims at the individuation and analysis of the deontic system which is applied but never explicitly discussed in Mīmā ṃ sā texts. The article outlines the basic distinction between three sorts of principles —hermeneutic, linguistic and (...) deontic. It proposes a mathematical formalization of the deontic principles and uses it to discuss a well-known example of seemingly conflicting statements, namely the prescription to undertake the malefic Śyena sacrifice and the prohibition to perform any harm. (shrink)

This article sets out to throw light on the intellectual and scientific activities of a group of Spanish humanists associated with the diplomat, aristocrat, and writer Diego Hurtado de Mendoza in the course of his fifteen years in Venice, Trent, and Rome, focusing on two aspects that have been neglected to date. These are (a) the integration of practices connected with the study of nature (herborizing expeditions and the production of herbaria) with the work of collating, translating, and commenting on (...) classical texts dealing with natural history and materia medica; and (b) the insertion of these scientific activities in Italy by the Spanish subjects of the Emperor Charles V within the broader context of a specific cultural policy. This policy would later be fleshed out in the scientific project of the Spanish Crown under Philip II, inseparable as it was from the monarch’s political and religious policy. (shrink)