During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of patients who require intensive care treatment may outnumber the number of intensive care beds, even in industrialized nations. Consequently, triage may become necessary. In Italy, France, and Spain, age has been used as a leading parameter to decide who is admitted to the intensive care unit, and who receives palliative care. Although age is an objective and easy-to-use parameter, it is ethically not ideal to withdraw ventilator therapy from elderly people who suffer from (...) COVID-19. We have developed a simple and easy-to-use scoring system to allow for triage that is based upon scientific outcome data and, at the same time, fulfills ethical standards. (shrink)

This article demonstrates how Adorno and Horkheimer’s turn to psychoanalytic concepts like sublimation and intra-psychic conflict strengthened critical theory. The piecemeal collective psychology they produced was used to understand fascism and anti-Semitism. But the full significance of these psychoanalytic explanations was concealed by Adorno, who elsewhere denied the possibility of psychology proper after the death of the individual. Adorno and Horkheimer’s underhanded borrowing from psychoanalysis for social analysis had the effect of filtering collective psychology through the lens of regression. To (...) amend this, the article analyzes psychoanalytic explanations from an interpretive perspective, building upon Jessica Benjamin’s psychoanalytic feminism, to contest the tactics of immanent criticism and to revitalize the project of a less dystopic collective psychology. (shrink)

In this close analysis of Immanuel Kant’s aesthetics in his Critique of Judgment, Dr. Julie N. Books, explains why Kant fails to provide a convincing basis for his desired necessity and universality of our aesthetic judgments about beauty. Drawing upon her extensive background in the visual arts, art history, and philosophy, Dr. Books provides a unique discussion of Kant’s supersensible, illuminating how it cannot justify his a priori nature of our aesthetic judgments about beauty. She uses examples from the history (...) of art, including paintings by Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Rubens, and Constable, to support her views. This book will make a significant addition to courses on the philosophy of Kant, aesthetics, philosophy of art, metaphysics, the history of Western philosophy, ethics, psychology, and art history. (shrink)

(1) Intentional system: a system whose behaviour we may reliably predict via the intentional strategy, i.e., by interpreting its behaviour as a (more or less) rational consequence of its beliefs and desires. (2) Reflexive intentional system: a system that is able to interpret itself via the intentional strategy, and whose behaviour is, thus, influenced by an understanding of itself. All intentional systems behave in a meaningful way, but only reflexive intentional systems are aware of the meaning, Hence, only the latter (...) are conscious of what they are doing. (shrink)

Research suggests that people with psychopathic traits experience fear-inducing stimuli differently from others, seeming to interpret fear as more positive and less negative. We expected that this reaction, termed fear enjoyment, would impact the effect of fear-inducing stimuli on self-report risk-taking behaviour. Risk-taking was measured before and after viewing excitement- and fear-inducing videos (N = 825). As expected from research showing that fear induction tends to reduce risk-taking tendencies, participants showed reduced risk-taking scores following a fear-inducing stimulus. Importantly, this relationship (...) was moderated by psychopathic traits. Participants who did not decrease their risk-taking tendencies following the video scored significantly higher on psychopathic traits. Also, some of the variance in the relationship between psychopathic traits and change in risk-taking was partly accounted for by fear enjoyment, suggesting that future research should examine whether fear enjoyment may play a role in the relationship between psychopathy and risk-taking. (shrink)

Cílem této práce je rozebrat možnosti argumentu holandské sázky ve prospěch probabilismu a stanovit jeho meze. Existuje mnoho podob argumentu, proto se nejprve budu věnovat popisu argumentu v jeho klasické podobě. Následně je podroben kritice ve třech oblastech: (1) problémy behaviorismu, (2) užitku peněz, (3) vztah koherence, jisté ztráty a racionality. Zásadní je dle mého především třetí oblast týkající se neschopnosti jednoduše propojit probabilistickou nekoherenci stupňů přesvědčení s jistou ztrátou a pragmatickou racionalitou. Věnuji se třem současným reinterpretacím argumentu ve prospěch (...) probabilistických norem (Armendt, Howson, Christensen), přičemž v textu docházím k závěru, že ani jedna z nich není uspokojivá. Selhávají v řešení problémů (Armendt, Christensen), nebo neříkají nic zajímavého ve prospěch probabilismu (Howson). Proto se domnívám, že rozbor argumentu především ukazuje, že pragmatická obhajoba epistemických norem racionality, jako je ta v argumentu holandské sázky, není pro probabilismus schůdnou cestou. Závěr se snaží nastínit, proč tomu tak je. (shrink)

Book REVIEW: Maria Paola Feretti, THE PUBLIC PERSPECTIVE: PUBLIC JUSTIFICATION AND THE ETHICS OF BELIEF, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, ISBN-10 1786608723, ISBN-13: 978-1786608727, Hardback, $126.00, e-Book, $38.00.

BOOK REVIEW Dražen Pehar, PEACE AS WAR: BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA, POST- DAYTON, CEU Press, 2019 ISBN-13: 978-963-386-302-2.

Transparency is an underpinning of workplace ethics. However, most of the existing research has focused on the relationship between leader transparency and its consequences. Drawing on social and self-regulation theory research, we examine the antecedents of followers’ transparency. Specifically, we propose that followers have higher levels of transparency when they are working with peers who have a high level of transparency. We further suggest that followers’ conscientiousness and agreeableness moderate the relationship between peer transparency and followers’ transparency. Using a time-lagged (...) design, we provide support for the proposed theoretical model. We found that follower conscientiousness substitutes the social regulation effect, while follower agreeableness enhances this social regulation effect. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed. (shrink)

The choice of tracking Hegel’s reception in the Arab world in order to explore the connections between modernity and colonialism is an excellent one, since it was Hegel himself who inaugurated the explicit philosophical discourse of modernity (Habermas 1990: 4-5). Ventura’s book is divided into three parts of roughly equal length of around fifty pages each. The first part provides an overview of Hegel’s philosophy of history, and of the place of Arab peoples and Islam in his philosophy of (...) history. This section allows Ventura to put forward some of her own interpretations in relation to questions that are the objects of controversy in the secondary literature on Hegel. In general, Ventura’s account of Hegel’s views on Arabs and Islam draws attention to the internal differentiation which characterized ‘Orientalism’ as a discourse. The second part of the book deals with the indirect reception of Hegel in nineteenth century Ottoman Syria (which encompassed modern day Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan). Ventura’s salutary emphasis on internal differentiation is one of the strengths of this part of the book. She emphasizes the differences between the American Protestant missionaries who founded the Syrian Protestant College in 1866 and the French Jesuits who founded the Université Saint-Joseph in 1880. Ventura argues that the American Protestant missionaries were influenced by Hegel (58), whereas the French Jesuits were not (59). The third part of the book attempts to provide an account of the direct reception of Hegel in the Arab world which, according to Ventura, only begins in the 1960s and 1970s. Ventura’s account of the contemporary reception of Hegel is based on the research that she conducted in Syria and Lebanon in 2009-2010, which involved conducting interviews with prominent Syrian and Lebanese philosophers and examining libraries. While the title of the book might suggest that it aims to provide an account of the reception of Hegel in the Arab world as a whole, the focus is really on the reception of Hegel in modern day Syria and Lebanon, with Egypt being given rather cursory treatment. (shrink)

Review of Lee Braver's 2012 book, Groundless Grounds: A Study of Wittgenstein and Heidegger.

Review of Nicola Möβner’s 'Visual Representations in Science. Concept and Epistemology'. Forthcoming in Grazer Philosophische Studien.

Book review of Meir Hemmo and Orly Shenker's book "The Road to Maxwell's Demon: Conceptual Foundations of Statistical Mechanics.".