School of Arts and Humanities

OFA 11 – Oficina de Filosofia Analítica
Graduate Workshop in Analytic Philosophy
9-10 February 2017
Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon
Room: TBA
Organized by Argument Clinic

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

This call for abstracts is directed at all graduate students and young researchers from the Portuguese analytic philosophy community, i.e. either Portuguese or based in Portugal, working in the analytic tradition (broadly construed). Young researchers include those who have obtained their PhD in philosophy within the last 5 years and also post-docs. All submitted abstracts must be in English or Portuguese, with no further restrictions as regards topics or areas.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Abstracts should have no more than 500 words, should be in PDF format and arranged for blind review (omitting any identifying reference, including meta-data).
All submissions must be made to < oficinanalitica AT gmail.com > with the subject “OFA 11 SUBMISSION”.
Information about authors must be provided on the body of the email and include: title of the paper, author’s full name, e-mail address and affiliation. Authors should also indicate whether they would be willing to participate as commentators as well. (This will not be relevant to the selection process.
Every abstract will be subject to double-blind review by the scientific committee (TBA) and authors will be informed of the decision by email (see dates bellow).

COMMENTATORS

Those interested in participating merely as commentators should send their data (name, e-mail address, affiliation and a short CV) to < oficinanalitica AT gmail.com > mentioning the areas of philosophy in which they are competent to comment.

DATES

Deadline for submissions: 2 December 2016.
Notification of acceptance : 9 January 2017.
Deadline for papers: 27 January 2017.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

TBA

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Diogo Santos
Domingos Faria
Hugo Luzio
José Mestre
Luís Veríssimo
Ricardo Miguel

CONTACT

oficinanalitica AT gmail.com
SPONSORS

Portuguese Society for Analytic Philosophy
Philosophy Centre of the University of Lisbon

We argue that Anthropocentrism – the kind of speciesism that privilegies the human species – is morally unacceptable. We distinguish and criticize three varieties of Anthropocentrism: unqualified, qualified empirical and qualified non-empirical. Firstly, unqualified Anthropocentrism is dismissed because it is grounded on a moral principle which implies that discriminations like racism and sexism are justified. Secondly, qualified empirical Anthropocentrism falls victim to the marginal cases argument, an argument that shows that properties which allegedly attribute moral status to every human and to no animal, ultimately, if they exclude every animal, they also exclude some humans. Lastly, qualified non-empirical Anthropocentrism is rejected due to implausible consequences about which individuals have moral status. After rejecting Anthropocentrism, we consider a generalization of the marginal cases argument against all forms of speciesism. We show that only a species entirely comprised of essentially moral individuals would be unaffected by this argument. However, the possibility of such a species has limited practical import. Contrarily, Anthropocentrism’s moral unacceptability requires profound changes in the way humans relate with animals.

This paper studies Portuguese Hebrew illuminated manuscripts of the late 15th century in terms of form and style. This group of manuscripts is compared with two other Sephardic decorated groups based in Andalusia and Toledo. This comparison permits to conclude that the Portuguese illuminated manuscripts, mainly composed by Bibles and Siddurs, have produced a more balanced synthesis between the aniconic tradition and the artistic developments of the age, namely those transmitted by Italian illuminated books.

The Cervera Bible (BNP IL 72) is unanimously recognized as one of the most sumptuous medieval illuminated Hebrew manuscripts and a true masterpiece of Sephardic art. It was acquired by the Royal Public Library in 1804, being one of the rare Hebrew manuscripts of which the names of all protagonists are known, namely the patron, the scribe of the consonant text, the scribe-Masorete and the illuminator. The manuscript was made between the Northeast Kingdom of Castile (copy of the text) in Cervera del Río Alhama, and the Kingdom of Navarra (Massorah and decoration), a region that had a rich activity of Hebrew manuscripts production in the towns of Tudela and Soria. In this paper we analyse the manuscript from a codicological, historical and art-historical perspectives. It stresses the analysis of the function and meaning of the grammatical treaties and the high technical quality of the illuminations. It interprets also the reason for its strong intercultural decorative program, combining the art of Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews, as well as Islamic and Mudéjar art with the French and Iberian Gothic art.