abstract The so‐called ‘morning‐after pill’ is a drug that prevents pregnancy if taken no later than 72 hours after presumably fertile sexual intercourse. This article argues against a right of conscientious objection for pharmacists with regard to dispensing this drug. Some arguments that might be advanced in support of this right will be considered and rejected. Section 2 argues that from a philosophical point of view, the most relevant question is not whether the morning‐after pill prevents implantation nor is it (...) whether preventing implantation is tantamount to abortion. Section 3 suggests a more general philosophical question as most pertinent, namely whether and to what extent a pharmacist can justifiably be exempted from dispensing the morning‐after pill when to do so would entail participating in something that goes against his or her deepest moral or religious convictions. Section 4 explains why, within liberal institutions, pharmacists should not have the right to conscientious objection to dispensing the morning‐after pill. (shrink)

In the era of fake news, truth has become a different and more urgent political problem than the traditional issues of the arcana imperii and the lies of the rulers. Starting from this observation, and deepening some considerations contained in the essay by Hannah Arendt _Thruth and Politics_, the article offers a worried report on the possibility of truth (scientific and factual) not to be reduced to mere opinion among others, and concludes that only a loyal collaboration between epistemic authorities (...) and politics can make the judicial road for the protection of truth less attractive. (shrink)

I väntan på den engelska Festschriften, den definitiva biografin eller de självförhärligande memoarerna kommer här för första gången en samling porträtt av den internationellt mest uppmärksammade svenska statsvetaren, den kontroversielle samhällsdebattören Bo Rothstein. Få samhällsforskare har med sådan intensitet tagit universitetens tredje uppgift till intäkt för att ifrågasätta gängse uppfattningar om sakernas tillstånd i riket. Många är de läsare, tittare eller åhörare som knappast kunnat undgå att beröras av hans synpunkter på allt från metoo till tiggeri, något färre är nog (...) de som på allvar tagit del av hans forskningsresultat om korruption och statsförvaltning. I denna bok tecknar ett tjugotal svenska forskare, författare och vänner sin bild av forskaren, debattören och livsnjutaren Bo Rothstein."--Back cover. (shrink)

Este artículo reseña: Corrado DEL BÒ, La giustizia. Un’introduzione filosófica, Carocci editore, Roma, 2022, 143 pp.

L'antigiudaismo cristiano è essenzialmente la credenza che il popolo ebraico debba rinunciare alla propria fede e convertirsi al cristianesimo. In questo testo viene studiata la prima forma sistematica di antigiudaismo sviluppata in termini filosofici e teologici da Agostino d'Ippona. Alla luce dell'analisi filosofica sembra che l'avversione di Agostino per la fede ebraica si fondi su un'autentica rimozione della specificità del popolo eletto, della Legge e della Rivelazione sul Sinai.

En Prolegómenos Kant afirma que la advertencia de Hume lo despertó del sueño dogmático. Pero en la carta a Garve de 1798 afirma que aquello que lo despertó del sueño dogmático fue la Antinomia de la razón pura. El propósito de este artículo es ofrecer una interpretación de estos dos testimonios autobiográficos, que permita conciliarlos de manera coherente. Voy a sostener al respecto que am- bos despertares aluden a un mismo proceso, que comienza con la advertencia de Hume sobre el (...) problema de la causalidad, y se consuma con el tránsito al examen crítico de la razón, propiciado por el problema antinómico. (shrink)

Conventional methods for fault diagnosis typically require a substantial amount of training data. However, for equipment with high reliability, it is arduous to form a large-scale well-annotated dataset due to the expense of data acquisition and costly annotation. Besides, the generated data have a large number of redundant features which degraded the performance of models. To overcome this, we proposed a feature transfer scenario that transfers knowledge from similar fields to enhance the accuracy of fault diagnosis with small sample. To (...) reduces the redundant information, data were filtered according to manifold consistency. Then, features were extracted based on CNN and feature transfer was conducted. For adequate fitness, the joint adaptation of conditional distribution and marginal distribution was used between the two domains. Minimum structural risk and MMD of adaptation were two indicators weighted for training the model. To test the efficiency of the model, we built an airborne fuel pump testbed, and contributed a new dataset that contained 15 categories of fault data, which serves as the small sample dataset in this research. Then the proposed model was applied in our experimental data. As a result, the fault diagnosis rate increases by 28.6% through our proposed model, which is more precise than other classical methods. The results of feature visualization further demonstrate that the features are more distinguished through the proposed method. All code and data are accessible on my GitHub. (shrink)

Background The legitimacy of conscientious objection to abortion continues to fuel heated debate in Italy. In two recent decisions, the European Committee for Social Rights underlined that conscientious objection places safe, legal, and accessible care and services out of reach for most Italian women and that the measures that Italy has adopted to guarantee free access to abortion services are inadequate. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Health states that current Italian legislation, if appropriately applied, accommodates both the right to conscientious objection (...) and the right to voluntary abortion. Main body One empirical argument used to demonstrate that conscientious objection does not create barriers to abortion is the “no correlation” argument, which the Italian Committee for Bioethics employed to demonstrate that no association exists between conscientious objection and waiting times for voluntary abortion in Italy and to support the weak form of conventional comprise adopted by the Italian legislation to balance the conflict between women’ autonomy and healthcare professionals’ moral integrity. Conversely, we showed how the “no correlation” argument fails to demonstrate the absence of a relationship between the number of conscientious objectors and waiting times for voluntary abortion, and that the limitations of the “no correlation” argument itself demonstrate how it is still difficult to describe the real effect of conscientious objection on the access to abortion services and to evaluate the suitability of conventional compromise to effectively balance conflicting moral principles. Conclusion Further studies are needed to better describe the relationship between conscientious objection and waiting times for voluntary abortion. If new evidence would show that the increasing proportion of objectors does undermine the efficacy of the Italian law and the right of a woman to freely obtain a voluntary abortion, new ways will need to be found to address the conflict between moral principles and restrict the protection accorded to the principle of moral integrity. This would inevitably imply the need to constrain and to redefine the terms and conditions for claiming conscientious objection. (shrink)

Drawing general inferences on the basis of single-case and small- n studies is often seen as problematic. This article suggests a logic of generalization based on thinly rationalistic social mechanisms. Ideal-type mechanisms can be derived from empirical observations in one case and, based on the assumption of thin rationality, used as a generalizing bridge to other contexts with similar actor constellations. Thus, the “portability” builds on expectations about similar mechanisms operating in similar contexts. We present the general logic behind such (...) “rationalistic generalization” and relate it to other ideas about generalization from single-case studies. (shrink)

book review: Sylvain Lévi, "La dottrina del sacrificio nei Brāhmaṇa. Con tre saggi di Roberto Calasso, Charles Malamoud e Louis Renou", traduzione di Silvia D’Intino. Adelphi, Milano 2009, 224 pp.

V domnevno Platonovem dialogu Alkibiadu I je postavljena trditev, da je del duše, ki skriva naše pravo sebstvo, naš jaz, podoben Bogu: nekdo, ki ga uvidi in je spoznal božansko – boga in razumnost, bo tako najbolje dojemal tudi samega sebe. Vprašanje sebstva v dialogu nastopi kot smiselno nadaljevanje poprejšnjih izpeljav, po katerih se določa, da mi nismo ne telo, ne naše lastne stvari, temveč duša. S tem, ko sebstvo poistovetimo z Bogom, nekako uidemo problemu samonanašanja in postavimo vprašanje samovédenja (...) v novo dimenzijo. Članek obravnava nekatere nejasnosti definicije sebstva , torej vključujočega telo in dušo, ali le kot duše, kot v Alkibiadu Prvem , ki uporablja telo in mu vlada , v odnosu do božanskega.In Alcibiades I, for many interpreters still a spurious dialogue, Plato claims that our true self resembles the divine. Someone who looked at it and grasped everything divine, God and intelligence, would have the best grasp of himself as well. The question of the self comes as the natural consequence of previous claims showing we are neither our possessions nor our bodies, but our souls. By making the self similar to God, we can tackle the problem of reflexivity differently, putting the question of self-knowledge into new perspective. The article discusses some unclear questions concerning the definition of the self, defined as »the whole man« in Charmides , i.e. including body as integral part, or as excluding it in Alcibiades I, where the self is the soul , since the soul uses the body and rules it , and its relations to the divine. (shrink)

Večina slikovnih koncepcij boleha za tem, da začenjajo previsoko, namreč na ravni slikovnih del in slikovnih medijev. Zaradi tega pri doživljanju slike nismo pozorni na razpoke in brezna. Ta očitek zadeva tako filozofske teorije slike kot tudi umetnostno teorijo, umetnostno zgodovino in muzejsko prakso, ki se ne zna več čuditi temu, da obstaja nekaj takega kot slike. Naslednji razmisleki se vrtijo okoli geneze slike, ki omogoča vdor v zaprtost nekega v lepi ali nič več lepi videz ujetega estetskega sveta, tako (...) da se sprostijo tako pred- kot tudi post-estetski motivi umetnosti. Umetnost terja genealogijo, ki bo enakovredna Nietzschejevi genealogiji morale ali Husserlovi genealogiji logike.The majority of pictorial conceptions are troubled by starting from too high a level, namely from the level of fine-art works and fine-art media. This is why we are likely to fail to notice crevices and chasms. This reproach is directed both at philosophical theories of the painting and at art theory, art history and museum practice, which is no longer able to express wonder at the sheer existence of the painting. The following reflections tackle the issue of the genesis of the painting, which enables us to penetrate into the closed sphere of the aesthetic world as caught in the beautiful, or no longer beautiful, appearance, and thereby sets free pre- as well as post-aesthetical motives of art. Art demands a genealogy on an equal stand with Nietzsche’s genealogy of morality or Husserl’s genealogy of logic. (shrink)

After a brief review of the notions of necessity and a priority, this paper scrutinizes Kripke's arguments for supposedly contingent a priori propositions and necessary a posteriori propositions involving proper names, and reaches a negative conclusion, i.e. there are no such propositions, or at least the propositions Kripke gives as examples are not such propositions. All of us, including Kripke himself, still have to face the old question raised by Hume, i.e. how can we justify the necessity and universality of (...) general statements on the basis of sensory or empirical evidence? (shrink)

In his Knowledge and Belief (1962), Hintikka establishes his system of epistemic logic with the KK (Knowing that One Knows, in symbols, Kp→KKp) principle (KK for short). However, his system of epistemic logic and the KK principle are grounded upon his strong notion of knowledge, which requires that knowledge is infallible, that is, it makes further inquiry pointless, and becomes ‘discussion-stopper’; knowledge implies truth, to wit, cognitive agents will not be mistaken in their knowledge; cognitive agents will be ‘perfect logicians’, (...) i.e. they have infinitive capability of logical inference. Hintikka calls the argument for KK from the strong notion of knowledge as the ‘transcendental argument’ for KK. Obviously, the strong notion of knowledge is far away from our ordinary conception of knowledge; based on such a strong sense of knowledge, epistemic logic has met the problem of logical omnipotence, and is difficult to apply in our ordinary cognitive practice. Moreover, there is no close connection of the KK principle with internalism or externalism. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to create an understanding of how the UN sustainable development goals can be used to steer stakeholder engagement for transformative change, meeting global challenges, and navigate a new business-societal practice driven by a values-based business model. The article is a conceptual study with case studies of the role that the SDGs play in multi-stakeholder dialog via the kind of sustainable business-societal practice that takes corporate social responsibility to the next level, where it is embedded (...) in a values-based business model, creating a new meaning to effect real business-societal transformation. Multi-stakeholder dialog implies interactive and communicative engagement with the full range of stakeholders in order to create value for all, employing a societal perspective and using the value network as a basis for effective decision-making. We explain our methodological approach by presenting multi-stakeholder dialog in practice, in the form of multiple case studies. These empirical settings consisted of two values-driven privately owned companies with a strong reporting mechanism and a clear transformation agenda based on the SDG challenges: IKEA and Löfbergs. The empirical study provides the basis for our proposed model. This article makes an original contribution to the study of the use of SDGs in management and service research. It investigates steering and navigating processes in specific contexts in order to determine what should be subject to legal enforcement and what comprises moral and/or ethical value, particularly at the societal level. (shrink)

Manuel Alejandro Serra Pérez (Ed.). La cualidad metafísica del ser respecto de la forma. Estudio de la crítica de Lawrence Dewan a Étienne Gilson. Pamplona, EUNSA, 2021, 336 pp. ISBN 9788431336608.

Jin Yuelin 金嶽霖 was a Chinese philosopher and logician. From 1914 to 1920 he studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, and received his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia in 1920. From 1921 until 1925, he studied in Europe and visited Great Britain, Germany, France, and Italy, among other countries. During these years, he studied at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences and at the University of Cambridge. At the end of 1925, Jin returned to (...) China and soon became a professor at Tsinghua University, where he began teaching logic in 1926. In 1931–1932, Jin went to Harvard University as a visiting scholar to study logic with the logician Henri M. Sheffer... (shrink)