Recent advances in virtual technologies have allowed the investigation of simulated moral actions in aversive moral dilemmas. Previous studies have employed diverse populations in order to explore these actions, with little research considering the significance of occupation on moral decision-making. For the first time, in this study we have investigated simulated moral actions in Virtual Reality made by professionally trained paramedics and fire service incident commanders who are frequently faced with and must respond to moral dilemmas. We found that specially (...) trained individuals showed distinct empathic and related personality trait scores and that these declined with years of experience working in the profession. Supporting the theory that these professionals develop resilience in moral conflict, reduced emotional arousal was observed during virtual simulations of a distressing dilemma. Furthermore, trained professionals demonstrated less regret following the execution of a moral action in virtual reality when compared to untrained control populations. We showed that, contrary to previous research, trained individuals made the same moral judgments and moral actions as untrained individuals, though showing less arousal and regret. In the face of increasing concerns regarding empathy decline in healthcare professionals, we suggest that the nature of this decline is complex and likely reflects the development of a necessary emotional resilience to distressing events. (shrink)

What is a rule, if it appears to become confused with life? And what is a human life, if, in every one of its gestures, of its words, and of its silences, it cannot be distinguished from the rule? It is to these questions that Agamben's new book turns by means of an impassioned reading of the fascinating and massive phenomenon of Western monasticism from Pachomius to St. Francis. The book reconstructs in detail the life of the monks with their (...) obsessive attention to temporal articulation and to the Rule, to ascetic techniques and to liturgy. But Agamben's thesis is that the true novelty of monasticism lies not in the confusion between life and norm, but in the discovery of a new dimension, in which "life" as such, perhaps for the first time, is affirmed in its autonomy, and in which the claim of the "highest poverty" and "use" challenges the law in ways that we must still grapple with today. How can we think a form-of-life, that is, a human life released from the grip of law, and a use of bodies and of the world that never becomes an appropriation? How can we think life as something not subject to ownership but only for common use? (shrink)

Comprehensive overview of Catholic teaching on practical issues in modern medicine and bioethics. This second edition includes a new chapter on bodily modifications and a series of new figures, as well as bringing the original text up to date in light of the teachings of Pope Francis and recent events such as the covid-19 pandemic.

In his encyclical on the environment, Laudato si’, Pope Francis proposes that the natural moral law can be reimagined as an ecological moral law that challenges us to evaluate the morality of our actions not only within our personal and nonpersonal relationships in society but also within the greater reality that is creation. In this essay, the author offers several reflections on the ramifications of this innovative proposal on a contemporary Catholic bioethics that seeks to be faithful to the classical (...) moral tradition. (shrink)

Among today's Italian philosophers, Massimo Cacciari is perhaps the most assiduous commentator of Dante. Philosophy, Mysticism, and the Political collects all of Cacciari's writings on Dante to this day, from his masterful analysis of St. Francis of Assisi in Dante's Paradiso and Giotto's frescoes to a new consideration of Dante's "European" idea of empire as a federation of nations, peoples, and languages. Cacciari does not force Dante into any philosophical straitjacket. Rather, he walks with Dante, takes notes, asks questions, raises (...) issues, and tries to understand the Divine Comedy in Dante's terms. Cacciari approaches Dante's Ulysses and the theologico-philosophical vertigo of Paradiso not as a critic but from the point of view of a faithful, assiduous, perceptive, sometimes perplexed, and sometimes worshipful reader. Cacciari's analysis shows once more that Dante does not belong to the past. Dante creates his own age and stays with us whenever we wish to follow his path. (shrink)

Spike Lee’s film 25 th Hour begins with an act of violence that it does not show: instead, the viewer hears the sounds of a dog being beaten. The dog’s menacing growl is then transformed into the growling image of Montgomery ‘Monty’ Brogan’s car speeding through New York. Monty spots the dog, and stops. It is only then that the viewer witnesses the results of the film’s ‘foundational’ act of violence: the bloody body of a dog beaten to pulp. When (...) Monty approaches the dog, it turns out the animal ‘still has some bite left in him’. Perhaps because the dog is a fighter, Monty decides to save him. Although the dog resists, he ultimately manages to get the dog in the trunk of his car. But Monty does not emerge from the rescue operation unscathed: blood is trickling from a cut in his neck. This scene can be read as a pre-figuration of a stomach-turning scene towards the end of the film, in which Monty’s friend Francis ‘Frank’ Slaughtery will beat up Monty’s face beyond recognition so that Monty will not be raped on his first night in jail. Monty’s face recalls the dog at the beginning of the film. It is through the bloody mess of their bodies that Monty and the dog begin to communicate, to enter into communion. This essay explores how this communion, this communication between Monty and the dog, comes about. I am interested, specifically, in what the significance of such an exploration might be for contemporary conceptions of community. The essay initially approaches this topic against the background of Emmanuel Levinas’ work on ethics, in which the notion of the face has played a crucial role. But its aim is really to situate the film, through the references to the work of Francis Bacon that it includes, in a more contemporary, post-Levinasian debate on an ethics of defacement. I am particularly interested in exploring the significance of such an ethics in the post-September 11 era, which is explicitly evoked at the beginning of Lee’s film. My argument is that Monty and the dog begin to communicate, to enter into a communion, and thus to form a community, through a process of defacement that simultaneously strips them from their ways of life and propels them into a shared ethical and political becoming. (shrink)

The relationship between logics with sets of theorems including contradictions (“inconsistent logics”) and theories closed under such logics is investigated. It is noted that if we take “theories” to be defined in terms of deductive closure understood in a way somewhat different from the standard, Tarskian, one, inconsistent logics can have consistent theories. That is, we can find some sets of formulas the closure of which under some inconsistent logic need not contain any contradictions. We prove this in a general (...) setting for a family of relevant connexive logics, extract the essential features of the proof in order to obtain a sufficient condition for the consistency of a theory in arbitrary logics, and finally consider some concrete examples of consistent mathematical theories in Abelian logic. The upshot is that on this way of understanding deductive closure, common to relevant logics, there is a rich and interesting kind of interaction between inconsistent logics and their theories. We argue that this suggests an important avenue for investigation of inconsistent logics, from both a technical and a philosophical perspective. (shrink)

This dissertation has two main goals. The first is to provide a practice-based analysis of the field of inconsistent mathematics: what motivates it? what role does logic have in it? what distinguishes it from classical mathematics? is it alternative or revolutionary? The second goal is to introduce and defend a new conception of inconsistent mathematics - queer incomaths - as a particularly effective answer to feminist critiques of classical logic and mathematics. This sets the stage for a genuine revolution in (...) mathematics, insofar as it suggests the need for a shift in mainstream attitudes about the role of logic and ethics in the practice of mathematics. (shrink)

La question de la compréhension philosophique et celle de la justice sont intrinsèquement liées depuis les débuts de la philosophie grecque. La compréhension platonicienne de la justice tire son origine pré-philosophique de la déesse Diké, tout comme l’herméneutique tire la sienne du dieu grec Hermès. L’ambivalence d’Hermès implique la possibilité de comprendre mais aussi la possibilité de séduire ou d’abuser de cette compréhension, ce qui, dans l’horizon de la philosophie socratique et platonicienne, signifie en fait un défaut de compréhension. Dans (...) la philosophie platonicienne, la connaissance et la position éthique sont intimement liées. Si cette position éthique s’entend comme la justice, celle-ci ne doit pas être entendue dans le sens, quelque peu réducteur, d’une harmonie entre les actions de l’homme et les lois de l’Etat. Nous devrions plutôt nous occuper de l’harmonie intérieure de l’homme et de son âme, ce qui signifie en même temps l’harmonie entre l’homme et le monde dans lequel il vit. De ce point de vue, « l’an-archisme » herméneutique potentiel peut s’orienter, d’une nouvelle façon cette fois-ci, vers la question de l’archè et se transposer d’une simple théorie en existence même de la vie humaine, traitée dans la philosophie platonicienne à travers la question de l’âme. (shrink)

The paper is structured as follows. First, I will single out three salient moments of trans philosophy, drawing on both my own experience as a trans person and the various attempts to theorize transness as laid out by Talia Mae Bettcher's "Trapped in the Wrong Theory". From there, I will extrapolate three ways to see the relationship between logic and trans philosophy, and provide for each some examples of both current and possible future work. Finally, in analogy with the literature (...) on feminist logic, I will attempt to address the further question of what trans logic could be, as a discipline and a system. (shrink)

In this highly topical book, Agamben ultimately arrives at original ideas about the future of democracy and casts a new light on the hidden relationship that ties law to violence.

Axel A. Barceló takes issue with my discussion of the dominant gender conception—according to which “woman” is the classical negation of “man”—as an example of logic-based hermeneutical injustice. His arguments are embedded in a more general critique of revisionist projects within feminist logic. [...] Barceló’s particular response relies on a number of assumptions which I think are worth pushing back against. In particular, I will argue that feminist logical revisionism does not depend on giving up universality or proving classical logical (...) truths wrong; that feminist logical revisionist arguments are not meant to be judged in isolation from the rest of the logic literature; and that exploratory work in non-classical feminist logic stands in no special need of justification. (shrink)

Mathematics, even more than the other sciences, is often presented as essentially unique, as if it could not be any other way. And yet, prima facie alternative mathematics are all over the place, from non-Western mathematics to mathematics based on nonclassical logics. Taking inspiration from Robin Dembroff’s analysis of critical gender kinds, and from Andrew Aberdein and Stephen Read’s analysis of alternative logics, in this paper I will introduce a practice-centered framework for the study of alternative mathematics based on the (...) notion of critical math kind. After sketching a model of mainstream mathematics, I will provide examples of how deviation along several distinct dimensions can occur, and how deviations can vary in their gravity. I will then discuss how the framework can be used to think of questions concerning the alternativeness status and philosophical implications of alleged alternative mathematics, and help us in identifying alternatives that suit our purposes. (shrink)

While much has been said on the connection between dominant rationality standards and systemic oppression, the specific role of logic in supporting epistemic injustice has not received much explicit attention. In this paper I highlight several ways in which it is possible for logic – as a discipline, as a particular system and as a gloss for rational common sense – to be implicated in epistemic injustice. Concrete examples are given for testimonial, content-based, hermeneutical and contributory injustices. I conclude by (...) elaborating on how the need to address these injustices affects the attitudes we should carry toward logic. (shrink)

Jedno od ključnih mjesta filozofiranja jest pitanje mogućnosti spoznaje, odnosno spoznatljivosti i izrecivosti onog najvišeg. Premda je pitanje o onome što je prvotno temeljno metafizičko pitanje, s njime se dotičemo i samih granica ljudskih spoznajnih mogućnosti. Već je kod Platona moguće sresti nekoliko mjesta gdje se on dotiče toga problema, dok će kasniji platonizam to pitanje još više zaoštriti. Tako se kod Plotina pokazuje da Jedno kao takvo nije moguće dokučiti mišljenjem, nego samo u mističkom sjedinjenju. Isto će tako više (...) nego stoljeće kasnije Pleton, uza svu svoju religijsku raznolikost, ustrajati na apsolutno transcendentnom božanskom. No to utvrđivanje granica domašaja uma i filozofijskog govora – time i filozofije kao takve – ne znači ukidanje filozofije, koja je iz temelja povezana s umom i jezikom, nego samo osvještenje kako ontologijske tako i jezične razine na kojoj se nahodimo. Tako, recimo, mišljeno Jedno nije Jedno kao takvo, slično kao što slika Boga i mišljeni Bog nisu sam Bog kao takav. Time se pitanje što je moguće opažati i što je moguće misliti proširuje s pitanjem što je moguće biti.One of the key aspects of philosophizing is the question of possibility of knowledge or intelligibility and predicability of the ultimate. Although the question of that which is first is a fundamental metaphysical question, it touches upon the very limits of human cognitive abilities. Already in Plato, we can find passages where he tackles this problem, and the problem becomes even more acute later in Platonism. In Plotinus, the One as such cannot be intellectually grasped; it can be reached only in mystical union. In the same fashion, almost a thousand years later, Plethon, with all his religious heterogeneity, persists in the absolute transcendent divine. However, this claim of the limits of reason and philosophical language – and with it philosophy as such – implies the awareness of the ontological and linguistic level, on which we stand, rather than the abolition of philosophy, which is as such basically related to reason and language. In this sense, the intelligible One is not the One as such, just as the image of God and the intelligible God are not God as such. With this, the question as to the possibility of perception and cognition is further deepened through the question of the possibility of being. (shrink)

In The Sacrament of Language Agamben investigates the phenomenon of the oath, arguing that it points toward a fundamental experience of language that lies at the root of religion and law alike.

Theories based on Frankfurt’s (Am Philos Q 15(2):157–162, 1978) view of action have recently been developed to account for passive, automatic, and habitual actions. What these theories share is that they aim to distinguish between actions and mere bodily movements without appealing to psychological states as causes. Instead, agents have guidance control over their actions. In this paper I argue that the versions of the theory that have been proposed are problematic. I propose to pay attention to Frankfurt’s other claim (...) instead: that actions and mere bodily movements are inherently different. I argue that Anscombe’s approach to action does take this inherent distinction seriously, and is able to account for passive, automatic, and habitual actions. (shrink)

This book consists of prose pieces that find a new form of expression for philosophy, an expression showing the inseparability of idea and prose--the very form of truth.

Les trois études rassemblent des réflexions du philosophe sur trois problèmes de méthode spécifiques : le concept de paradigme, la théorie des signatures et la relation entre histoire et archéologie.

He proposes, in his characteristically allusive and intriguing way, a politics of gestureOCoa politics of means without end.Among the topics Agamben takes up are the properly political paradigms of experience, as well as those generally not ...

Arguing that Western power is both "government" and "glory," this book reveals the "theological-economic" paradigm at the origin of several of the most important components of modern politics and illuminates the function of consent and the ...

How can agents act virtuously out of habit? Virtuous actions are done for the right reasons, and acting for (right) reasons seems to involve deliberation. Yet, deliberation is absent if an agent’s action is habitual. That implies that the relationship between reasons and actions should be characterized in such a way that deliberation is unnecessary. In this paper, I examine three possible solutions: radical externalism, unconscious psychologism, and unconscious factualism. I argue that these proposals all fail to cast reasons in (...) their proper role. In light of that, I propose an alternative view of how to account for habitual virtuous actions, based on the work of G. E. M. Anscombe. I maintain that if we focus on the inherently rational structure of actions, the tension between acting habitually and acting for the right reason dissolves. (shrink)

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the nature of conscious control. As a result, experiments suggesting that we lack conscious control over our actions cannot be properly evaluated. Joshua Shepherd (2015; 2021) aims to fill this gap. His proposal is grounded in the standard causalist account of action, according to which, simply put, bodily movements are controlled by the agent if and only if they are caused, in the right way, by the relevant psychological states. In this paper, I (...) argue that the proposal does not succeed in distinguishing between mere causation and actual control; it does not solve the problem of deviant causation. On the basis of my criticism, Anscombean action theory promises to offer a valuable perspective. It suggests that an important function of consciousness is to integrate an action into a rational whole. If this is on the right track, it supports Shepherd’s overall claim that the importance of consciousness for action control is often underestimated, because this contribution of consciousness may often go unnoticed in experimental settings. (shrink)

Explores the symbiosis of philosophy and literature in understanding negativity.

What is a paradigm? -- Theory of signatures -- Philosophical archeology.

In The Time That Remains, Agamben seeks to separate the Pauline texts from the history of the Church that canonized them, thus revealing them to be "the fundamental messianic texts of the West.

The assumption that natural selection alone is sufficient to explain not only which traits get fixed in a population/species, but also how they develop, has been questioned since Darwin’s times, and increasingly in the last decades. Alternative theories, linked to genetic and phenotypic processes, or to the theory of complex systems, have been proposed to explain the rise of the phenotypic variety upon which natural selection acts. In this article, we illustrate the current state of the issue and we propose (...) a logical space based on phenotypic robustness that allows a classification of evolutionary phenomena and can provide a framework for unifying all these accounts. (shrink)

The great advances of the last decades both in cognitive theories and in evolutionary biology have not yet fully merged. Most evolutionary hypotheses around the mind still rely on classical cognitivism, while most theories of cognition still look for adaptive explanations. We believe that the merging of novel cognitive theories into a pluralistic account can greatly improve our understanding of both what cognition is and how it evolved.

Parthood and composition are everywhere. The leg of a table is part of the table, the word "Christmas" is part of the sentence "I wish you a merry Christmas", the 13th century is part of the Middle Ages. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg compose Benelux, the body of a deer is composed of a huge number of cells, the Middle Ages are composed of the Early Middle Ages, High Middle Ages, and Late Middle Ages. Is there really a general theory (...) covering every instance of parthood and composition? Is classical mereology this general theory? Are its seemingly counter-intuitive features serious defects? -/- Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction addresses the multifaceted and lively philosophical debates surrounding these questions, and defends the idea that classical mereology is indeed the general and exhaustive theory of parthood and composition in the domain of concrete entities. -/- Several examples of parthood and composition, involving entities of different kinds, are scrutinised in depth. Incidentally, mereology is shown to interact in a surprising way with metaontology. Presenting a well-organized and comprehensive discussion of parthood and related notions, Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction contributes to a better understanding of a subject central to contemporary metaphysics. (shrink)