The title of this volume A Man of Many Interests: Plutarch on Religion, Myth, and Magic. Essays in honour of Aurelio Pérez Jiménez is first and foremost a coalescing homage to Plutarch and to Aurelio, and to the way they have been inspiring (as master and indirect disciple) a multitude of readers in their path to knowledge, here metonymically represented by the scholars who offer their tribute to them. The analysis developed throughout the several contributions favors a philological approach of (...) wide spectrum, i.e., stemming from literary and linguistic aspects, it projects them into their cultural, religious, philosophical, and historical framework. The works were organized into two broad sections, respectively devoted to the Lives and to the Moralia. Contributors are: Frances Titchener, Carlos Alcalde Martín, José Luis Calvo, Delfim Leão, Judith Mossman, Anastasios G. Nikolaidis, Christopher Pelling, Philip Stadter, Paola Volpe, Francesco Becchi, Israel Muñoz Gallarte, Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta, Geert Roskam, Vicente M. Ramón Palerm, Frederick Brenk, John Dillon, Franco Ferrari, Aristoula Georgiadou, Luc van der Stockt, Luisa Lesage Gárriga. (shrink)

Although Boyle has been regarded as a champion of the seventeenth century Cartesian mechanical philosophy, I defend the position that Boyle’s views conciliate between a strictly mechanistic conception of fundamental matter and a non-reductionist conception of chemical qualities. In particular, I argue that this conciliation is evident in Boyle’s ontological distinction between fundamental corpuscles endowed with mechanistic properties and higher-level corpuscular concretions endowed with chemical properties. Some of these points have already been acknowledged by contemporary scholars, and I actively engage (...) with their ideas in this paper. However I attempt to contribute to the debate over Boyle’s mechanical philosophy by arguing that Boyle’s writings suggest an emergentist, albeit still mechanistic, notion of chemical properties. I contrast Boyle’s views against those of strict reductionist mechanical philosophers, focusing on the famous debate with Spinoza over the redintegration of niter, and argue that Boyle’s complex chemical ontology provides a more satisfactory understanding of chemical phenomena than is provided by a strictly reductionist and Cartesian mechanical philosophy. (shrink)

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries marks a period of transition between the vitalistic ontology that had dominated Renaissance natural philosophy and the Early Modern mechanistic paradigm endorsed by, among others, the Cartesians and Newtonians. This paper will focus on how the tensions between vitalism and mechanism played themselves out in the context of sixteenth and seventeenth century chemistry and chemical philosophy, particularly in the works of Paracelsus, Jan Baptista Van Helmont, Robert Fludd, and Robert Boyle. Rather than argue that these (...) natural philosophers each embraced either fully vitalistic or fully mechanistic ontologies, I hope to demonstrate that these thinkers adhered to complicated and nuanced ontologies that cannot be described in either purely vitalistic or purely mechanistic terms. A central feature of my argument is the claim that a corpuscularian theory of matter does not entail a strictly mechanistic and reductionistic account of chemical properties. I also argue that what marks the shift from pre-modern vitalistic chemical philosophy to the modern chemical philosophy that marked the Chemical Revolution is not the victory of mechanism and reductionism in chemistry but, rather, the shift to a physicalistic and naturalistic account of chemical properties and vital spirits. (shrink)

: The concepts of intention and intentionality were particularly significant notions within the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic medieval philosophical traditions, and they regained philosophical importance in the twentieth century. The theories of intention and intentionality of the medieval Islamic philosopher and physician Ibn Sina and the phenomenological philosopher and mathematician Edmund Husserl are examined, compared, and contrasted here, showing that Ibn Sina's conception of intention is naturalistic and, in its naturalism, is influenced by the medical professional culture to which Ibn (...) Sina belonged. As well, Husserl's anti-naturalistic conception of intentionality is influenced by his background as a mathematician and by his desire to ground mathematics and the empirical sciences in a truly scientific philosophy. In conclusion, an argument is presented for the superiority of the Husserlian transcendentalist account of intentionality over the Avicennian naturalistic account, on the grounds that the latter falls prey to psychologism and reductionism, the two specters that according to Husserl must haunt all naturalistic accounts of consciousness. (shrink)

The focus of Through Your Eyes: Religious Alterity and the Early Modern Western Imaginations is the (mostly Western) understanding, representation and self-critical appropriation of the "religious other" between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Mutually constitutive processes of selfing/othering are observed through the lenses of creedal Jews, a bhakti Brahmin, a widely translated Morisco historian, a collector of Western and Eastern singularia, Christian missionaries in Asia, critical converts, toleration theorists, and freethinkers: in other words, people dwelling in an 'in-between' space which (...) undermines any binary conception of the Self and the Other. The genesis of the volume was in exchanges between eight international scholars and the two editors, intellectual historian Giovanni Tarantino and anthropologist Paola von Wyss-Giacosa, who share an interest in comparatism, debates over toleration, and history of emotions. (shrink)

This paper defends an interpretation of Husserl''s theory of language, specifically as it appears in the Logical Investigations, as an example of a larger body of theories dubbed ''language as calculus''. Although this particular interpretation has been previously defended by other authors, such as Hintikka and Kusch, this paper proposes to contribute to the discussion by arguing that what makes this interpretation plausible are Husserl''s distinction between the notions of meaning-intention and meaning-fulfillment, his view that meaning is instantiated through meaning-intending (...) acts of transcendental consciousness, and his view that the content of meaning-intending acts is ideal meaning simpliciter. As well, the paper argues that the phenomenological method of reduction itself presupposes the notion that reality as such can be reached by subtracting the influence of the language of the natural attitude and its ontological commitments and it, thus, presupposes the conception of language as a reinterpretable calculus. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, EarlyView.

In this response essay, Ceva and Ferretti reply to their critics and clarify some key aspects of their book. Specifically, the discussion starts by elaborating on the notion of an ethics of office accountability, explaining that the specification of institutional norms of officeholders behaviour is the result of practices of officeholders' interaction (including democratic practices) and reflection. The second theme is the responsibility for political corruption. The authors emphasise the importance of focussing not only on retrospective responsibility, for the sake (...) of punishing corrupt behaviour, but especially on accountability as a form of self-reflection by the officeholders on the weaknesses of their institutional work together. This exercise is preliminary to their assuming forward-looking responsibilities for anti-corruption. The third and final part discusses political corruption as a specifically interactive wrong. For the authors, the magnitude and moral salience of the wrong of corruption, as well as the different wrongs implicated both from an interactive perspective and in consideration of the harm caused to third parties, must be assessed in light of the context and the moral standing of the public institution in question. In this sense, political corruption is a pro tanto wrong. (shrink)

Henry Sidgwick sought to interpret F.H. Bradley’s ethics, as presented in Ethical Studies, in fundamentally Aristotelian terms. Sidgwick “found it ‘natural’ to think of self-realization as the ‘realization or development into act of the potentialities constituting the definite formed character of an individual’.” In this paper, I want to demonstrate that, rather than giving the work of Bradley an Aristotelian interpretation, as Sidgwick sought to do, one should focus on studying the Hegelian influences on and the historicist aspects of Ethical (...) Studies. Bradley’s account of the self to be realized is far from approaching Aristotle’s account. First of all, Bradley never speaks in terms of actual and potential character, and he certainly would not accept Sidgwick’s claim that the potentialities constitute the definite formed character of an individual. There is nothing Aristotelian in Bradley’s talk of history and evolution, nor in his holistic doctrine of ethical relativism. (shrink)

This paper establishes that Robert Boyle’s complex chemical ontology implies a non-reductionistic conception of chemical qualities and, more specifically, a conception of chemical qualities as being dispositional and relational. Though Peter Anstey has already shown that that Boyle considered sensible qualities to be dispositional and relational, this moves beyond Anstey’s work by extending his arguments to chemical properties. These arguments are, however, merely a first step in establishing a non-reductionistic interpretation of Boyle’s chemical ontology. A further argument will show that (...) Boyle regards chemical and other higher-level properties as being emergent and supervenient properties. These arguments are supported by substantial textual evidence from Boyle’s writings, which show that he clearly conceived of chemical substances as functional wholes whose properties emerge not only from the microstructural ordering of their parts but also from their relationship with other chemical substances within the context of experimental practice. (shrink)

This essay proposes to discuss the manner in which Jan Baptista van Helmont helped to transform the Neoplatonic notions of vital spirit and of ferment by giving these notions an unambiguously chemical interpretation, thereby influencing the eventual naturalization of these ideas in the work of late seventeenth century chymists. This chemical interpretation of vital spirit and ferment forms part of Helmont’s hybrid ontology, which fuses a corpuscular conception of minima naturalia with a non-corporeal conception of semina rerum. For Helmont, chemical (...) alterations involve the minima as physical units but also depend upon ferments that are contained in the semina, which function as formative spiritual agents. Helmont’s nuanced ontology ultimately contributes to the development of modern corpuscularian theory by explaining many chemical reactions in fundamentally corpuscular terms, as the addition and subtraction of particles. (shrink)

Cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) can play a prominent role in tackling wicked sustainability problems. In particular, cities are critical venues for testing the potential of CSPs as agents of systemic change. However, the effectiveness of CSPs in orchestrating resources to drive systemic change in urban contexts is still not fully understood. We fill this gap through the longitudinal study of an action research case of a CSP offering urban food assistance. Our process model synthesizes how the resource orchestration activities put in (...) place by the CSP spur phases of systemic change in the urban food system through different yet interrelated lifecycle stages of the initiative. Our results extend the literature on CSPs and systemic change showing the relationship between resource orchestration and the delivery of systemic change in urban contexts by CSPs, with significant implications for the design and management of CSPs dealing with wicked sustainability problems in cities. (shrink)

Math and reading are related, and math problems are often accompanied by problems in reading. In the present study, we used a dimensional approach and we aimed to assess the relationship of reading and math with the cognitive skills assumed to underlie the development of math. The sample included 97 children from 4th and 5th grades of a primary school. Children were administered measures of reading and math, non-verbal IQ, and various underlying cognitive abilities of math. We also included measures (...) of phonological awareness and working memory. Two approaches were undertaken to elucidate the relations of the cognitive skills with math and reading. In the first approach, we examined the unique contributions of math and reading ability, as well as their interaction, to each cognitive ability. In the second approach, the cognitive abilities were taken to predict math and reading. Results from the first set of analyses showed specific effects of math on number sense and number system knowledge, whereas counting was affected by both math and reading. No math-by-reading interactions were observed. In contrast, for phonological awareness, an interaction of math and reading was found. Lower performing children on both math and reading performed disproportionately lower. Results with respect to the second approach confirmed the specific relation of counting, number sense, and number system knowledge to math and the relation of counting to reading but added that each math-related marker contributed independently to math. Following this approach, no unique effects of phonological awareness on math and reading were found. In all, the results show that math is specifically related to counting, number sense, and number system knowledge. The results also highlight what each approach can contribute to an understanding of the relations of the various cognitive correlates with reading and math. (shrink)

Traditional agricultural systems in Mediterranean Europe were characterised by diversity and multifunctionality, and polycultures played a fundamental role in them. Some of these farm systems and the traditional agricultural practices linked to them have now largely disappeared, but they are increasingly recognised as a valuable source of agroecological knowledge. In this study, we seek to recover the long-lost experience from a traditional Mediterranean intercropping system that combined the cultivation of vines and cereals. Using local historical resources available for a Catalan (...) village for the second half of the nineteenth century, we compare the characteristics and functioning of intercropping and monocultures of vines and cereals using socioeconomic and agrarian metabolism indicators, and discuss the advantages of the traditional intercropping system as an adaptation to the productive limitations of the agroecosystem (particularly in terms of soil quality and productivity, and availability of labour and draft force), but also as a peasant economy strategy that responded to a multifunctional balancing rationale. This way, this research contributes to recovering the knowledge and experience of a long-lasting traditional crop system that had been used until the second half of the twentieth century, and provides an understanding of the rationale and advantages of traditional Mediterranean crop systems beyond productivity and profit maximisation strategies. (shrink)

Digital competencies were part of online education and now when returning to the classroom what will happen or what we expect for the future in education. The objective is to analyze and describe the perspectives of the level of digital competence, the non-experimental descriptive quantitative methodology is used with 1987 university students. Resulting that the instrument adapted to the Peruvian version is adequate according to statistics such as Cronbach's Alpha. Concluding that the digital competences improved the academic quality and have (...) a good level. Society is waiting for the next step to know what is presented to us in education. (shrink)

The article presents political corruption as a problem of public ethics of institutions. It first explains the theory of institutional action that underlies the conception of political corruption as a deficit of “office accountability”. Having clarified the officeholders’ duties in their institutional capacity, it portrays political corruption as an “internal enemy” of public institutions. A discussion follows of the normative implications for an approach to anti-corruption based on the officeholders’ direct engagement.

Presentación del dossier. Filosofía de la psicopatología: perspectivas sobre la mente, la racionalidad y la agencia.

As a theoretical extension of other previous studies, this work represents an improvement of the notions about the relationship between adolescence and Mafia. The research has been aiming at exploring teenagers’ universe within specific social contexts where the presence of criminal organizations is significant, focusing the attention on the modalities through which evolutionary tasks are coped with in contexts with high Mafia density and often characterized by a perception of social space that makes personal, financial, and political development problematic. The (...) research has involved 93 teenagers who live in southern regions where the presence of Mafia organizations is significant. Six focus groups have been carried out, recorded, and transcribed. Verbalizations were analyzed through appropriate qualitative templates, which allowed detecting of three thematic macro-areas: representations of Mafia, emotions connected to it, and planning skills. The qualitative analy.. (shrink)

The view that propositional knowledge is knowledge of facts is prima facie rather appealing, especially for realistically minded philosophers, but it is difficult to square with the referential opacity of knowledge attributions of the form ‘S knows that p’. For how could Lois Lane know that Superman can fly and ignore that Clark Kent can fly if knowledge is a two-place relation between an agent and a fact and the fact that Superman can fly just is the fact that Clark (...) Kent can fly? Giorgio Volpe reviews some attempts to tackle the problem and then proposes a new solution which exploits the contrastivist claim that knowledge is a three-place relation between an agent, a fact and a contrast. (shrink)

In this paper I outline an account of the structure of perceptual justification that develops Wittgenstein’s thought that the possibility of acquiring any degree of justification for our beliefs depends on placing certain propositions outside the route of empirical inquiry, turning them into the ‘hinges’ of our rational evaluations. The proposal is akin to ‘moderate’ accounts of the structure of perceptual justification, but it conjoins Wittgenstein’s insight with explanationist and contrastivist ideas, and so differs in important respects both from such (...) accounts and from other versions of hinge epistemology. I maintain that the basic presuppositions of the epistemic practice of taking experience at face value are not totally refractory to evidential assessment, arguing that they can receive some degree of second-order empirical justification via inference to the best explanation. And I address the worry that the account may face the problem of ‘easy knowledge’ by helping myself to the contrastivist view that empirical knowledge is best understood as a three-place, contrastive relation between an agent, a proposition (or fact) and a contrast. This leads me to replace the usual closure principles for epistemic justification and knowledge with corresponding contrastive principles, filling in the final details of contrastive hinge epistemology. (shrink)

We invited five Cavell scholars to write on this topic. What follows is a vibrant exchange among Paola Marrati, Andrew Norris, Jörg Volbers, Cary Wolfe and Thomas Dumm addressing the question whether, in the contemporary political context, Cavell’s skepticism and his Emersonian perfectionism amount to a politics at all.

Pensar Europa filosóficamente hoy no constituye un intento de definición y representación de una identidad cultural con carácter unívoco y, menos aún, de una identidad política que, por siglos, ha sido siempre parcial y ha estado entretejida con imágenes y prácticas diferentes y plurales. Lo que hay que replantear y recolocar en el centro es su carácter dialéctico, su continuo saltar (la aptitud acrobática de la que hablaba Ortega) y oscilar entre razón y pasiones, lógica e instinto, progreso y decadencia, (...) libertad y totalitarismo, entre el reconocimiento del otro y del diverso como voluntad de apertura a lo nuevo y la reivindicación de una civilización eurocéntrica que objetivamente ha sentado las bases de la modernidad. (shrink)

Este trabajo de investigación se ocupa de un análisis sociocrítico de la puesta en forma de la novela Auto de fe del escritor austriaco Elías Canetti. El análisis se centra en el tratamiento crítico de la realidad y la visión desesperanzada que Canetti objetiva en la obra sobre los procesos de modernidad. Elías Canetti, desde una posición realista crítica, evalúa descarnadamente la confianza ciega en el ideal ilustrado, a partir de una modernidad exacerbada que se materializa en la axiología del (...) héroe problemático. (shrink)

How much do animals matter--morally? Can we keep considering them as second class beings, to be used merely for our benefit? Or, should we offer them some form of moral egalitarianism? Inserting itself into the passionate debate over animal rights, this fascinating, provocative work by renowned scholar Paola Cavalieri advances a radical proposal: that we extend basic human rights to the nonhuman animals we currently treat as "things." Cavalieri first goes back in time, tracing the roots of the debate (...) from the 1970s, then explores not only the ethical but also the scientific viewpoints, examining the debate's precedents in mainstream Western philosophy. She considers the main proposals of reform that recently have been advanced within the framework of today's prevailing ethical perspectives. Are these proposals satisfying? Cavalieri says no, claiming that it is necessary to go beyond the traditional opposition between utilitarianism and Kantianism and focus on the question of fundamental moral protection. In the case of human beings, such protection is granted within the widely shared moral doctrine of universal human rights' theory. Cavalieri argues that if we examine closely this theory, we will discover that its very logic extends to nonhuman animals as beings who are owed basic moral and legal rights and that, as a result, human rights are not human after all. (shrink)

While moral perfectionists rank conscious beings according to their cognitive abilities, Paola Cavalieri launches a more inclusive defense of all forms of subjectivity. In concert with Peter Singer, J. M. Coetzee, Harlan B. Miller, and other leading animal studies scholars, she expands our understanding of the nonhuman in such a way that the derogatory category of "the animal" becomes meaningless. In so doing, she presents a nonhierachical approach to ethics that better respects the value of the conscious self. Cavalieri (...) opens with a dialogue between two imagined philosophers, laying out her challenge to moral perfectionism and tracing its influence on our attitudes toward the "unworthy." She then follows with a roundtable "multilogue" which takes on the role of reason in ethics and the boundaries of moral status. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winner for Literature and author of _The Lives of Animals_, emphasizes the animality of human beings; Miller, a prominent analytic philosopher at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, dismantles the rationalizations of human bias; Cary Wolfe, professor of English at Rice University, advocates an active exposure to other worlds and beings; and Matthew Calarco, author of _Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida_, extends ethical consideration to entities that traditionally have little or no moral status, such as plants and ecosystems. As Peter Singer writes in his foreword, the implications of this conversation extend far beyond the issue of the moral status of animals. They "get to the heart of some important differences about how we should do philosophy, and how philosophy can relate to our everyday life." From the divergences between analytical and continental approaches to the relevance of posthumanist thinking in contemporary ethics, the psychology of speciesism, and the practical consequences of an antiperfectionist stance, _The Death of the Animal_ confronts issues that will concern anyone interested in a serious study of morality. (shrink)

The value of solidarity, which implies mutual concern and support, is often conveyed in our everyday moral and political language. But what is its conceptual relationship with justice? Influential positions in this debate may argue for the opposition between the two concepts: justice is impartial and universal, while solidarity is partial and limited. The present paper aims to shortly explore a range of theories that may exemplify possible answers to this position, from communitarian and realist views, which ultimately confirm the (...) opposition, to political solidarities, which claim an instrumental need for solidarity as a reaction to injustices. Special attention will be paid to Habermas’s compatibilist account of solidarity as the “reverse side” of justice. The paper contends that a compelling answer should preserve the difference between the two spheres and the essential features of solidarity by also sketching a concept of solidarity as a social duty arising from our moral interdependence. (shrink)

Sexual behaviour and mate choice are key intervening variables between attachment and life histories. We propose a set of predictions relating attachment, reproductive strategies, and mate choice criteria.