Debates on the moral status of human embryos have been highly and continuously controversial. For many, these controversies have turned into a fruitless scholastical endeavor. However, recent developments and insights in cellular biology have cast further doubt on one of the core points of dissent: the argument from potentiality. In this article we want to show in a nonscholastical way why this argument cannot possibly survive. Getting once more into the intricacies of status debates is a must in our eyes. (...) Not merely intellectual coherence but the standing and self-understanding of current stem cell research might profit from finally taking leave of the argument from potentiality. (shrink)

By the end of the 1820s, an innovative product was introduced in the northern Italian editorial market: technical and popular periodicals offering “useful knowledge” to a larger audience composed of members of the provincial middle-class, clergymen, and modestly educated craftsmen. By examining their medical content, this paper shows that popularisation did not merely entail disseminating a set of stable, unanimous, and trustworthy medical doctrines; rather, it represented a crucial step in the making of science during a period in which medical (...) theories were still various and contradictory. Moreover, it demonstrates that the environmental and preventative approach to disease, which these medical contributors often employed, did reflect recent developments in chemical or physical knowledge and responded to pedagogical and informative goals; but it mostly served to affirm the social usefulness of medicine and the legitimacy of health professionals' participation in determining how to regulate more general epidemiologic, social, and political issues. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the widely accepted view that rights establish normative constraints on authority’s powers, command is still a core notion in modern philosophical jurisprudence. Nevertheless, if Herbert Hart is correct in his analysis on the deficiencies of the traditional command theories, a command is binding only if there is a right of being obeyed implying authority. My main objective in this paper is to make explicit the semantical and normative relations between rights and commands. In the first part, after some remarks (...) on Hobbes’ semantics, I will note that, although commands are performative utterances paradigmatically addressed to “inferiors”, claims, on the contrary, are utterances addressed also to “superiors”. In the second part, assuming Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld’s distinctions between claims, privileges, powers and immunities, I will discuss Joseph Raz’s theory that authorities have a right of being obeyed. Looking for a more coherent theory, and taking a little bit of distance from Raz’s definitions, I will present some refinements in the semantics of authority. My main point is that a command is valid only if it presupposes a right of being obeyed, a right that would be a claim-right in Hohfeld’s sense; but since all claims are correlated to duties, this entails that the duty of being obeyed cannot be created by any acts of the authority which holds the claim. Anyway, since claims purport to present reasons for action, a command can only constitute a reason for action for persons who have a duty of obeying other persons with claims of being obeyed. In that case, commanding involves making an appeal not to fear, but to respect for authority. (shrink)

Cuando hablamos de iconos nos referimos a representaciones que producen un cierto impacto en nosotros aunque no sean perfectas; del icono se esperan armonía, belleza, simplicidad. Cuando el icono no es una imagen sino una persona humana, se convierte en referente: observamos aspectos de su personalidad con los que nos identificamos aunque nos coincidan exactamente con los nuestros. A lo largo de la historia de la ciencia, las mujeres han sido iconos referenciales fundamentalmente por dos cosas, su calidad humana y (...) su excelencia científica. (shrink)

We present the foucaultian critique of the transcendental theme. We will try to show, sharpening the layout of the problem, that the specific target of such critique is not so much the transcendental instance as such, present in a sui generis way in Foucault himself, as rather a certain interpretation of this instance, mastered by the “knowledge” scheme and its postulates of natural affinity, constituent subjectivity and transcendental theology. So we will determine, in the first place, the framework and reach (...) of such critique. Secondly, we will set forth the interpretation of the transcendental which rules in the foucaultian critique of this theme. In the third place, we will take into account the assumptions which rule in this interpretation. Finally, we will sketch the foucaultian idea of “knowledge” (savoir). (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss Chateaubriand’s criticism of the so-called slingshot arguments, particularly of those versions proposed by Church and by Gödel . I concentrate on two critical points made by Chateaubriand, and argue that they are not decisive against these versions of the slingshot. I also discuss Chateaubriand’s hybrid theory of definite descriptions and argue that, despite its intrinsic interest, it cannot avoid the conclusion of the slingshot.

Psiche sets up a close-knit comparison between the psychology of Plato's Republic and Freud's psychoanalysis. Convergences and divergences are discussed in relation both to the Platonic conception of the oneiric emergence of repressed desires that prefigures the main path of Freud's subconscious, to the analysis of the psychopathologies related to these theoretical formulations and to the two diagnostic and therapeutic approaches adopted. Another crucial theme is the Platonic eros - the examination of which is also extended to the Symposium and (...) Phaedrus - taken up explicitly by Freud in relation to the concept of libido. Finally, the author also addresses the two themes - of, inter alia, a metapsychological nature - inherent to the moral dimension. -/- Psiche istituisce un confronto ravvicinato tra la psicologia della "Repubblica" di Platone e la psicoanalisi di Freud. Convergenze e divergenze vengono discusse in relazione sia alla concezione platonica dell'emersione onirica dei desideri repressi, che prefigura la via regia per l'inconscio di Freud, sia all'analisi delle psicopatologie correlate a tali impostazioni teoriche, sia ai due approcci diagnostici e terapeutici adottati. Altro tema cruciale è l'eros platonico - la cui disamina viene estesa anche al "Simposio" e al "Fedro" - ripreso esplicitamente da Freud in relazione al concetto di libido. L'autore affronta, infine, le due tematizzazioni, di natura metapsicologica e non solo, inerenti alla dimensione morale. (shrink)

Meditation comprises a series of practices mainly developed in eastern cultures aiming at controlling emotions and enhancing attentional processes. Several authors proposed to divide meditation techniques in focused attention and open monitoring techniques. Previous studies have reported differences in brain networks underlying FA and OM. On the other hand common activations across different meditative practices have been reported. Despite differences between forms of meditation and their underlying cognitive processes, we propose that all meditative techniques could share a central process that (...) would be supported by a core network for meditation since their general common goal is to induce relaxation, regulating attention and developing an attitude of detachment from one’s own thoughts. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a quantitative meta-analysis based on activation likelihood estimation of 10 neuroimaging studies on different meditative techniques to evidence the core cortical network subserving meditation. We showed activation of basal ganglia , limbic system and medial prefrontal cortex . We discuss the functional role of these structures in meditation and we tentatively propose a neurocognitive model of meditation that could guide future research. (shrink)

This paper proposes new ways of characterizing eighteenth-century French Cartesianism. Besides two widely-accepted elements—the belief in “strict mechanism” and the idea that to demonstrate in physics does not involve mathematics, but reference to mechanical models—I add two more, hitherto neglected, features. First, a strong emphasis on experimentalism, namely the view that experiments are crucial to natural-philosophical practice. Second, an epistemological thesis that I call “conjecturalism,” which consists in doubting that natural philosophy would attain an ultimate truth on the nature of (...) things. To explore these facets of Cartesianism, I focus on the works of the Jesuit Noël Regnault. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The paper aims to show that Rahel Jaeggi's objections to Walzer's model of internal critique are in many respects inconsistent, and above all that these objections are a sign of a political deficit in the neo-Hegelian methodology adopted by Jaeggi to develop her model of immanent critique. The same deficit concerns Jaeggi's use of Marx's model of the critique of ideology, which can be fruitfully reworked by Walzer's reinterpretation of Gramsci's theory of the struggle for hegemony.

One of the legacies of modern philosophy is to have separated or bifurcated the human from nature. Marco Altamirano offers a critique of the modern concept of nature in order to chart a new trajectory for the philosophy of nature. -/- By examining the history of the concept of nature, Altamirano shows how a spatial and epistemological concept of nature emerged in Descartes, where a subject confronts an object in space and subsequently wonders about her mode of access to (...) that object. He then argues that a time-based concept of nature is necessary in order to reinstall the subject within its eventual ecology. Deploying conceptual resources from Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault, and Leroi- Gourhan (among others), Altamirano shows how the concept of technology harbors an escape route from the spatial and epistemological picture of nature. Ultimately, this book draws the profile of a concept of nature based on time and technology that bypasses the nature-artifice distinction that has mired the philosophy of nature since modern philosophy. (shrink)

Dr. Marco Forgione (University of Milan), COSMOS team member, interviewed Prof. Peter Galison (Harvard University) in occasion of the event “Photographs from Outer Space”.

This paper explores the possibility of developing a new understanding of the traditional notion of human death as the separation of soul and body by relying on the resources of St Thomas’s hylomorphism. It therefore develops the concept of material kenosis, showing in what way the Thomistic understanding of death should be broadened beyond the mere understanding of it as substantial change. The paper concludes by suggesting that this view of human death supplements St Thomas’s interpretation of the notion of (...) Divine kenosis in Philippians 2:7. (shrink)

Estudo comparativo da "actante" Tarpéia em Tito Lívio e Propércio. O percurso narrativo construído por Tito Lívio em sua obra historiográfica para a Personagem Tarpéia e na poesia Lírica de Propércio. Contribuição da Teoria Semiótica de linha francesa para a interpretação comparativa nas duas formas discursivas: historiografia e lírica.

The paper explores the possibility of philosophical cooperation between Thomism and American pragmatism by resurrecting a largely forgotten debate between Wilmon Henry Sheldon and Jacques Maritain. The discussion focuses primarily on the problem of truth as it is discussed by Peirce and by some contemporary Thomists, including Maritain but also Milbank, Pickstock, Lonergan, Balthasar, Pieper, and Ulrich. The paper claims that, if we bring Peirce’s version of pragmatism into the picture, cooperation is not possible but likely to be fruitful for (...) both pragmatism and Thomism. (shrink)

According to Grice's “Modified Occam's Razor”, in case of uncertainty between the implicature account and the polysemy account of word uses it is parsimonious to opt for the former. However, it is widely agreed that uses can be partially conventionalised by repetition. This fact, I argue, raises a serious problem for MOR as a methodological principle, but also for the substantial notion of implicature in lexical pragmatics. In order to overcome these problems, I propose to reinterpret implicatures in terms of (...) implicature-like effects delivered by non-inferential processes. (shrink)

In this paper we argue, against a somewhat standard view, that pragmatic phenomena occur in mathematical language. We provide concrete examples supporting this thesis.

L’esistenza dell’assoluto. Sulla Dottrina della scienza 1805 - The Doctrine of Science of 1805, which Fichte developed at the University of Erlangen, is a philosophical reflection displaying great theoretical vigour. It can be seen as consisting of two parts: the theory of existence or of knowledge and the theory of form or of objectivity. In this work Fichte makes a criticism of certain concepts of Schelling, as expounded in Philosophy and Religion , concerning the relationship between thought and life, between (...) subjectivity and absolute reason and between form and being, as well as the idea of nothingness. Considered here to be the central concept in Fichte’s doctrine is the idea of knowledge or of thought as absolute existence and as the existence of the absolute. (shrink)

The opposition between behaviour- and mind-reading accounts of data on infants and non-human primates could be less dramatic than has been thought up to now. In this paper, I argue for this thesis by analysing a possible neuro-computational explanation of early mind-reading, based on a mechanism of associative generalization which is apt to implement the notion of mental states as intervening variables proposed by Andrew Whiten. This account allows capturing important continuities between behaviour-reading and mind-reading, insofar as both are supposed (...) to be just different kinds of generalization from perceptual experience. Specifically, I will argue that the projection of inner experiences to others which is involved in early mind-reading does not imply a computational leap beyond associative generalization from perceptual experience. (shrink)