In this paper, we analyze the legal situation regarding physician-assisted suicide in the world. Our hypothesis is that the prohibitive stance on physician-assisted suicide in most societies in the world today seems to be related to our moral attitudes toward suicide. This brings us to a discussion about life itself. We claim that the total lack of legal protection for physician-assisted suicide from international organizations and most countries in the world lies in a philosophical assumption that supports much of our (...) common beliefs about what life really is. This assumption states that life must be thought of as not belonging exclusively to the individual. We argue that this assumption is a misconception that can be heard in the debate on suicide. Consequently we endorse a different conception of life which tends to favor a pro-choice stance towards suicide and assisted death in general. This position takes the patient’s decision about when to die more seriously. We conclude that there is no reason why physician-assisted suicide does not deserve legal protection as an individual right to die under international law. (shrink)

The occasion for this dialogue on Elisabeth Anscombe’s legacy for twenty-first-century ethics came with the publication in Italian of the collection of her ethical writings (G. E. M. Anscombe, Scritti di etica con un saggio di Peter Geach, a cura di S. Cremaschi, Morcelliana, Brescia 2022). In addition to making Anscombe’s ethical writings accessible to the Italian public, the book brings together her contribution to practical philosophy to its full extent for the first time. Vaccarezza's essay discusses Anscombe’s critique of (...) the modern law-based view of ethics. Magri’s contribution focuses on Anscombe’s anti-anti-naturalism, aiming to unearth the twofold agenda in her project of meta-critique of modern moral philosophy. De Anna's paper sets out to examine the role of Wittgensteinian ways of thinking in Anscombe’s proposed restructuring of modern ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Hume’s Imagination by Tito MAGRI Don Garrett MAGRI, Tito. Hume’s Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. xiii + 494 pp. Cloth, $115.00In A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume defines “the imagination” in an inclusive sense as “the faculty, by which we form our fainter ideas”—that is, those that are not memories. In the narrower sense, it is “the same faculty, excluding only our demonstrative (...) and probable reasonings.” Book 1 of the Treatise is largely a work about the imagination in the inclusive sense. Indeed, by Magri’s count, book 1 contains more occurrences of the term imagination/imagine and its variants than of any other philosophical term with the exceptions of impression and idea. Yet until the late 1990s, it was surprisingly rare to find commentators treating the Humean imagination as a focus of attention in its own right, and the complete range of its many roles and operations has largely remained uncatalogued until now. With twelve highly detailed chapters distinguishing no fewer than twenty different “works of the imagination” governed by eighteen different “principles,” Hume’s Imagination is by far the most comprehensive treatment of the faculty to date. Indeed, its only limitations are its two announced ones. First, it does not discuss the imagination in Hume’s subsequent An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (where its operations receive much less attention) or other writings. Second, it does not discuss the extensive roles played by the imagination in Treatise, book 2 (“Of the Passions”) and book 3 (“Of Morals”)—although readers may hope that a sequel will take up those roles. The wide array of roles and operations that Hume attributes to the inclusive imagination, even in Treatise, book 1 alone, naturally raises the question of how much real unity it has as a psychological natural kind. Magri’s original and provocative answer to this question is that the various operations of Hume’s imagination are unified by their filling in various “cognitive gaps” between the representational contents of the mind’s sensations and memories, on the one hand, and the full range of its cognitive contents and capacities, on the other. Rather than appealing to the kind of purely intellectual ideas posited by Descartes and other so-called rationalists who drew a strong distinction between the intellect and the imagination, however, Hume traces our further abilities to the inferences and mental transitions that the imagination produces utilizing only broadly imagistic ideas. In support of this answer, the book is divided into five parts. Part I, chapter 1 explains the central notion of a “cognitive gap” in terms of a “dualism of representation and inference.” For Magri, “representation” applies only to sensation and memory (although he grants that [End Page 156] “presentation” might be the better term in the case of sensation), as governed by Hume’s self-described first principle: “our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent.” This principle is the topic of chapter 2. “Inference” (or, more broadly, “transitions”) applies only to the imagination, which generates new “nonrepresentational” cognitive content in accordance with what Hume calls his second principle: “the liberty of the imagination to transpose and change its ideas.” This principle is the topic of chapter 3. To say, as Magri does, that the only “representational” ideas for Hume are those of memory sounds highly paradoxical, but the intended (nonparadoxical) meaning becomes clear enough on careful reading. Part 2 of the book takes up the role of the imagination in generating specifically conceptual modes of thought. In chapter 4, Magri explains the mind’s capacity for generality in thought through the operation of “abstract ideas” and its capacity to distinguish different aspects of an object through the operation of “distinctions of reason.” In chapter 5, he examines the generation of distinctively modal content through the capacity of the imagination to conceive the same object as having different qualities or being placed in different circumstances. Part 3 turns to the crucial topic of the imagination’s generation of cognition of a world of “realities” beyond sensation and memory through the production of “causal ideas.” Chapter 6... (shrink)

Agostinho discute a violência sexual contra as mulheres no primeiro livro de A Cidade de Deus (De ciuitate Dei). Tendo vivido nos séculos IV e V, o autor se reflete sobre o estupro de três perspectivas: moral, legal e social. Quanto à moral, defende que o estupro não macula a dignidade das vítimas. Quanto à legal, considera o estupro um crime contra a vítima e que esta, além de não merecer culpabilização nem pena, deve ter uma consolatio. No âmbito social, (...) denuncia a mentalidade da época como baseada numa concepção deturpada da pudicitia (oriunda da narrativa de Tito Lívio sobre o estupro de Lucrécia e seu subsequente suicídio). Segundo Agostinho, a pudicícia romana agrava a punição injusta das vítimas com violências ulteriores. Nesses termos, reivindica uma política imperial de proteção e amparo às mulheres violentadas. O estudo desse texto de Agostinho é desenvolvido em quatro fases: breve contexto histórico, o exemplo imperial de pudor feminino (Lucrécia), as consequências desastrosas desse exemplo e, enfim, o posicionamento de Agostinho. (shrink)

Authors De Marco and colleagues have presented a new model on the concept of invasiveness, redefining both its technical definition and practical implementation.1 While the authors raise valid critiques regarding the discrepancy in definitions, I cannot help but wonder about the purpose of redefining terms for which little confusion, if any, exists? This commentary seeks to scrutinise the rationale supporting the new model in the absence of significant clinical confusion and to explore the implications for clinical practice. Initially, one may (...) notice there is no mention of clinical relevancy, confusion among patients or whether the discrepancy in terms is causing miscommunication. It seems reasonable that some clinical confusion may exist, but so too does a similar imbalance of terms when speaking technically across the specialties; take depression and its definition as a primary example. While I certainly agree with the illustration of non-invasive prenatal testing being compared with venous blood draws as a disparity in terminology, little evidence suggests confusion concerning the nosology.2 The medical community, including both physicians and patients, recognises that the terminology is specifically used within the …. (shrink)

Estoy interesado en indagar ¿cómo es que nuestros pensamientos demostrativos dependientes directamente de la experiencia son acerca de ciertos objetos materiales? ¿Cuál es, y cómo es la relación entre un estado mental y cierto objeto material cuando el primero es acerca del segundo? Esto es, ¿en qué consiste que el pensamiento demostrativo refiera a un objeto material? ¿Cómo es que nuestros pensamientos demostrativos acerca del mundo material se refieren a objetos del mundo material? Creo que existen dos maneras muy generales (...) de responder a esta pregunta, y cada una de estas maneras depende de la versión de la teoría de la mente que se tenga. Por un lado, existe una versión Fregeana de la mente, según la cual existen modos de presentación que delinean la forma de la mente y que determinan cuáles son los objetos acerca de los cuales la mente tiene pensamientos. Existe otra versión más científica de la mente la cual llamo No-Fregeana, según la cual no existen modos de presentación que determinen acerca de cuáles cosas la mente tiene pensamientos, sino más bien son las relaciones causales (quizá desarrolladas evolutivamente) que existen entre clases de cosas y clases de estados mentales las que determinan acerca de cuáles objetos la mente tiene pensamientos. Lo que deseo hacer es mostrar por qué creo que el tratamiento no-Fregeano de la pregunta no da una explicación satisfactoria de cómo es posible que una mente pueda tener pensamientos demostrativos verdaderos acerca de objetos materiales. Mis reparos tienen que ver con la manera como conciben la conexión entre la mente y el mundo para que el pensamiento sea posible. (shrink)

A central issue of cognitive neuroscience is to understand how a large collection of coupled neurons combines external signals with internal memories into new coherent patterns of meaning. An external stimulus localized at some input spreads over a large assembly of coupled neurons, building up a collective state univocally corresponding to the stimulus. Thus, the synchronization of spike trains of many individual neurons is the basis of a coherent perception. Based on recent investigations of homoclinic chaotic systems and their synchronization, (...) a novel conjecture for the dynamics of single neurons and, consequently, for neuron assemblies is formulated. Homoclinic chaos is proposed as a suitable way to code information in time by trains of equal spikes occurring at apparently erratic times. In order to classify the set of different perceptions, the percept space can be given a metric structure by introducing a distance measure between distinct percepts. The distance in percept space is conjugate to the duration of the perception in the sense that an uncertainty relation in percept space is associated with time-limited perceptions. This coding of different percepts by synchronized spike trains entails fundamental quantum features which are not restricted to microscopic phenomena. It is conjectured that they are related to the details of the perceptual chain rather than depending on Planck's action. (shrink)

RESUMEN Este articulo pretende describir el concepto de subjetividad nómade desarrollado por Rosi Braidotti, teniendo en cuenta su estructura con respecto a la diferencia sexual. Este análisis permite comprender cuál es la configuración del sujeto nómade revisando las implicaciones que tiene asociar tal concepto con la búsqueda de aceptación y representación de esa diferencia en el contexto político. La lectura critica de Braidotti remite directamente a examinar los conceptos originales de Deleuze y Guattari referidos al nomadismo, como singularización, devenir y (...) subjetivación. ABSTRACT This article aims to describe the concept of nomadic subjectivity developed by Rosi Braidotti, while considering its structure with respect to sexual difference. This analysis allows us to understand the configuration of the nomadic subject by reviewing the implications of associating the concept with the search for acceptance and representation of the sexual difference in the political context. A critical reading of Braidotti means to examine the Deleuze and Guattari's original concepts about nomadism, such as singularization, becoming and subjectivation. (shrink)

Negative freedom (as opposed to positive freedom) has been widely considered an inherently non problematic notion. This paper attempts to show that, if considered as a good with a minimally objective structure, negative freedom can disrupt the capacity for deliberating in a substantively (that is, non purely formal, decision-theoretic) rational way. The argument turns on the notion of non-satiation, as a property of the objective value of some goods of not changing when the availability of the good is increased. Two (...) classes of non-satiating goods are distinguished, one of which has disruptive consequences for rational deliberation. Negative freedom belongs to this last class; and its non-satiating conceptual nature is defended by means of a simple dispositional analysis of value. It is suggested that also rationality itself can be regarded as a non-satiating good that can disrupt deliberation. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 6, Page 60-62, June 2011.

This chapter contains section titled: Direct Passions Pleasure and Desire Reason and Passion References Further Reading.

Acknowledgments I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Jakob Amstutz for his continual feedback during my writing of this work. ...

Procuraremos investigar as condições filosóficas que permitiram que o pensamento de Heidegger tenha identificado, nos anos 1930, a questão da comunidade àquela da Alemanha. Trata-se de mostrar que isso se deve ao modo pelo qual ele compreendeu o contexto de surgimento de sua investigação. Na sequência de sua obra (em particular no conjunto de estudos sobre poesia da década de 1950, reunidos em A Caminho da Linguagem), Heidegger procurará interrogar uma transformação desse contexto que impedirá todo pensamento da comunidade em (...) termos de limites locais. (shrink)

En su célebre viaje a las mansiones celestes, encontró Mahoma en el sétimo cielo “compuesto todo de clarísima luz, un ánjel de setenta mil cabezas; cada cabeza tenía otras tantas bocas, cada boca setenta mil lenguas, i cada lengua hablaba setenta mil idiomas con que alababa las glorias del Señor.” ¿Por qué no existe en el Mundo de Colon un políglota semejante que dia i noche pregone las alabanzas i las glorias de la paz? Podrá observárseme que este vocero celestial (...) seria innecesario, no habiendo hoi en el Nuevo Mundo quien no conozca la necesidad i las ventajas de la paz. Tal observacion careceria desde luego de fuerza. Que el ánjel de la paz pudiera en nuestras Repúblicas predicar en un desierto, se concibe; pero que su voz no fuese necesaria en ellas, puede al ménos ponerse en duda. Los hispano-americanos, en teoría todos somos partidarios de la paz; pero en la práctica, es lo cierto que la paz desaparece frecuentemen te, sin saberse cómo, de entre las manos de sus amigos entusiastas. (shrink)

Le rapprochement des œuvres de Machiavel et de Bodin a déjà une longue histoire, à laquelle l’intention de cet article n’est pas d’ajouter un chapitre : il ne s’agit donc pas de proposer une lecture d’ensemble du rapport entre ces deux auteurs ou entre leurs doctrines générales, mais seulement de mettre en parallèle leurs conceptions d’une certaine méthode pour interpréter les histoires, conceptions qui se laissent lire d’une part dans l’épître dédicatoire et le proemio des Discorsi sopra la prima deca (...) di Tito Livio de Machiavel (ca. 1518) et d’autre part dans l’épître dédicatoire et le proemium de la Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem de Bodin (1566). À un demi-siècle d’écart, ces deux prologues mettent en effet en évidence le caractère indispensable d’un art de la lectio des histoires pour fonder les raisonnements de la science politique, mais ils le font, semble-t-il, en adoptant deux points de vue profondément différents : la nature exacte de cette différence est le véritable objet de cet article. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay presents the chief reasons for making a distinction between propositional and doxastic justification and, also, points out two things: no theory of propositional justification implies a theory of doxastic justification; infinitism is, essentially, a theory of propositional justification. Additionally, this paper tries to shed some light on the three conjointly sufficient conditions for a proper infinitist view of propositional justification.

One of the difficulties in understanding the meaning of perception in Merleau-Ponty’s work comes from the ambiguous tone of his descriptions. Therefore, to understand it thoroughly one should question the origin of this tone and inquire about the relationship between perception and language and, more particularly, between philosophy and literature. This is what is at stake in his last courses at the Collège de France, where Merleau-Ponty envisages perception as being associated with literature and as having a special kinship to (...) the notion of “poetic vision,” which appears in Rimbaud’s first ‘Letter from the Seer’.L’une des difficultés qui se posent pour comprendre le sens de la perception chez Merleau-Ponty vient du ton ambigu de ses descriptions. C’est ainsi que pour comprendre ce qu’il entend par perception, il faudrait questionner l’origine de ce ton et interroger le rapport que la perception entretient avec le langage, et plus particulièrement celui que la philosophie entretient avec la littérature. Voilà justement l’une des questions abordées dans ses derniers cours au Collège de France, où il comprend la perception comme associée à la littérature et ayant une proximité particulière avec la notion de «vision poétique» qui apparaît dans la première «Lettre du voyant» de Rimbaud. (shrink)

Microinjection of frog oocytes, a technique whose usefulness for studies on gene expression is already established, may be similarly helpful for the unraveling of several enigmas of cellular metabolism and its organization.

Entification is now displayed in its nude and native state, and serves to explain the constant mental process, and the true nature of the representations of ...

The chapter 'Of power' of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a very fine discussion of agency and a very complex piece of philosophy. It is the result of the superimposition of at least three layers of text (those of the first, second and fifth editions of the Essay), expressive of widely differing views of the same matters. The argument concerning agency and free will that it puts forward (as it now stands, reporting Locke's last word on the subject) is (...) thus beset with problems, and even inconsistencies. But these textual and analytical difficulties should not hide from us the relevance and, in a way, the deep coherence of Locke's philosophy of action. In what follows, I will attempt to cast some light on this complicated interpretive and conceptual matter, by a careful reading of some parts of Locke's discussion. The first section shows how accounting for the evaluation and choice of remote goods, in terms of their real value and in preference to smaller, nearer ones, is a crucial problem for Locke's philosophy of action. The second section reads Locke's move from an internalist to an externalist view of motivation as a first, conceptually complex step towards such an account; and shows how this is linked to a change in the concept of will. The third and fourth sections reconstruct Locke's account (a pattern of suspension and examination of occurrent desire); discuss the role of the motivational and normative concept of happiness; and cast some doubt on the consistency of Locke's position. (shrink)

Analytic metaphysics displays a meta-metaphysical pattern: A shift toward a foundational conception of the aims and methods of metaphysical enquiry and away from a pragmatic understanding of foundational questions of metaphysics. Pragmatism looms large in Carnap’s and Quine’s metaphysics, across the differences between ontological pluralism and antirealism and extensionalist ontological realism. The two philosophers share the pairing of a deflationary take on ontology and a pragmatist rendering of foundational issues. In particular, Quine complements his quantification-based ontology, which denies ontological pluralism, (...) with a pragmatic understanding of cognitive and explanatory significance. This pattern is traceable in Lewis’s modal realism. A different line in analytic meta-metaphysics is characterized by easing of pragmatist commitments and redefining the object of enquiry, from what there is to what is fundamental. I give and discuss examples of this different theoretical line and illustrate their contribution to the ineludible task of a philosophical revision of pragmatism. (shrink)

O artigo apresenta uma análise sobre o processo de transformação das mentalidades do homem grego na transição dos universos arcaico e clássico. Neste sentido, analisa-se a gradativa laicização dos processos sociopolíticos no universo cultural do dito período de transição a partir da efetivação do lógos como meio de reconhecimento da realidade e efetivação política na pólis. Analisar-se-á, ainda, numa perspectiva de história das mentalidades, o processo que levará o homem ao reconhecimento das suas historicidade e eticidade. As fontes escolhidas para (...) o debate proposto são as tragédias sofoclianas, em especial Édipo Rei, e a ética aristotélica. (shrink)

No artigo que se segue, temos por objetivo proceder uma análise comparativista entre a narrativa literária das tragédias de Sófocles e a filosofia de Aristóteles. Propomos uma leitura que tende a evidenciar a existência de uma proto-ética no universo mítico-trágico escrito pelo tragediógrafo de Colona e sua validação filosófica desenvolvida na obra ética do filósofo de Estagira. Desta forma, as personagens das tragédias de Sófocles serão compreendidas como metáforas do agir ético pensado e sistematizado por Aristóteles na sua Ethica Nicomachea. (...) Assim procedendo, pensamos lançar uma possibilidade interpretativa sobre o processo de formação do entimento da ética ao longo da construção da consciência histórica do homem e da solidificação do agir-ético no campo da filosófia, sendo a literatura, neste caso, ferramenta fundamenal para se perceber o processo histórico das transformações sócio-culturais próprias do período transitorial da Grécia Arcaica para a Grécia Clássica e da gradativa racionalização do universo político da Grécia. (shrink)

It seems opportune to commemorate in ‘Augustinianum’ the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, insofar as he is an outstanding figure whose theoritical insight gave birth to the computer revolution of the twentieth centur y. His theories are equally important for the methodology supporting studies in the humanities.