Clarifying the nature of possibility is crucial for an evaluation of the phenomenological approach to ontology. From a phenomenological perspective, it is ontological possibility, and not spatiotemporal existence, that has pre-eminent ontological status. Since the sphere of phenomenological being and the sphere of experienceability turn out to be overlapping, this makes room for two perspectives. We can confer foundational priority to the acts of consciousness over possibilities, or to pre-set possibilities over the activity of consciousness. Husserl’s position on this issue (...) seems to change over time. Ultimately, the establishment of a phenomenological perspective must involve a rejection of any hypostatization of pre-set possibilities, but not all implications of this theoretical step seem to be drawn in Husserl’s texts. This paper is devoted to an illustration of how the phenomenological notion of possibility should change when we reject the hypostatization of possibility, that is, when we reject the idea that all acts of consciousness are to be conceived as realizations of pre-set “ideal forms”. We examine this question, first, by trying to clarify the conceptual constellation of “possibility” in Husserl’s texts. This leads to an overall classification of the features of constituted possibilities. Then we distinguish such constituted possibilities from their constituting conditions, which outlines a different sense of “possibility”. In the last instance two “possibilizing” dimensions are shown to lie at the root of all ontic possibilities. This leads to a final suggestion on the nature of the relation between experience and possibility. Actual experiences create the room for possibility: they are possibilizations. In this sense, experience is to be taken as a generative sphere which goes beyond the customary boundary between epistemic and ontological. From this point of view all experience is to be conceived as emergence. (shrink)

Citizen science models of public participation in scientific research represent a growing area of opportunity for health and biomedical research, as well as new impetus for more collaborative forms of engagement in large-scale research. However, this also surfaces a variety of ethical issues that both fall outside of and build upon the standard human subjects concerns in bioethics. This article provides background on citizen science, examples of current projects in the field, and discussion of established and emerging ethical issues for (...) citizen science in health and biomedical research. (shrink)

In this paper, I take a fresh look at Husserl's key distinction between objectifying and non‐objectifying acts, which roughly amounts to a distinction between presentational and evaluative experiences. My goal is to provide a clear and unified reconstruction of Husserl's argument for the thesis that non‐objectifying acts are necessarily founded in objectifying acts, a thesis that is highly controversial in and beyond Husserlian scholarship. In the first section, I reconstruct Husserl's view in the Logical Investigations, according to which only objectifying (...) acts establish an independent intentional relation to their objects, and argue that it is justified by the positing function of objectifying acts. In the second section, I address two problematic interpretations of this view and, after criticizing them, I present what I take to be Husserl's core argument for his position. In the third section, I turn to the revision of the view of the Logical Investigations that Husserl proposes in the wake of his transcendental turn, especially in Ideas I and II. On Husserl's revised view, all acts are objectifying, including emotional acts [Gemütsakte]. This revision has led scholars to consider Husserl's view aporetic. I propose an alternative interpretation that dispels the purported aporia. I conclude with some remarks on the costs and benefits of my reading, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of Husserl's view in general. (shrink)

Masked priming experiments occasionally revealed surprising effects: Participants responded slower for congruent compared to incongruent primes. This negative congruency effect was ascribed to inhibition of prime-induced activation [Eimer, M., & Schlaghecken, F. . Response faciliation and inhibition in subliminal priming. Biological Psychology, 64, 7–26.] that sets in if the prime activation is sufficiently strong. The current study tests this assumption by implementing manipulations designed to vary the amount of prime-induced activation in three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 3, NCEs were (...) observed despite reduced prime-induced activation. Experiment 2 revealed no NCE with at least similar prime strength. Thus, the amount of prime activation did not predict whether or not NCEs occurred. The findings are discussed with regard to the inhibition account and the recently proposed account of mask-induced activation [cf. Lleras, A., & Enns, J. T. . Negative compatibility or object updating? A cautionary tale of mask-dependent priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 475–493; Verleger, R., Jaskowski, P., Aydemir, A., van der Lubbe, R. H. J., & Groen, M. . Qualitative differences between conscious and nonconscious processing? On inverse priming induced by masked arrows. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 494–515]. (shrink)

The general aim of this paper is to provide insight into the relevance of critical phenomenology for the study of the patient-provider relationship in health care systems in U.S. jails, prisons, and detention facilities. In particular, I utilize tools from the work of scholars studying phenomenological approaches to health care and structural forms of oppression to analyze several harms that arise from the provision of medical care under the punitive constraints of carceral facilities.

Is logic masculine? Is women's lack of interest in the "hard core" philosophical disciplines of formal logic and semantics symptomatic of an inadequacy linked to sex? Is the failure of women to excel in pure mathematics and mathematical science a function of their inability to think rationally? Andrea Nye undermines the assumptions that inform these questions, assumptions such as: logic is unitary, logic is independenet of concrete human relations, and logic transcends historical circumstances as well as gender. In a (...) series of studies of the logics of historical figures--Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Abelard, Ockham, and Frege--she traces the changing interrelationships between logical innovation and oppressive speech strategies, showing that logic is not transcendent truth but abstract forms of language spoken by men, whether Greek ruling citizens, or scientists. (shrink)

The increasing centrality of business firms in contemporary societies calls for a renewed attention to the democratization of these actors. This paper sheds new light on the possibility of democratizing business firms by bridging recent scholarship in two fields—deliberative democracy and business ethics. To date, deliberative democracy has largely neglected the role of business firms in democratic societies. While business ethics scholarship has given more attention to these issues, it has overlooked the possibility of deliberation within firms. As argued in (...) the paper, a combination of reforms based on the ideas of workplace deliberation and business deliberation is necessary in order to promote the prospect of deliberation in different business contexts. The paper also discusses the importance of more democratic firms for deliberative democracy at large and, in particular, for the recent debate on deliberative systems. Finally, the paper suggests new areas of investigation to better understand the prospect of democratic deliberation in business firms. (shrink)

Some works of architecture have remarkable aesthetic value. According to certain philosophers, part of this value derives from the appearance of such constructions to fulfil the function for which they were built. I argue that one way of understanding the connection between function and aesthetic value resides in the concept of functional beauty. I analyse a number of recent accounts of this notion, then offer a better way of understanding it. I then focus my attention on the relation between aesthetic (...) and moral values and claim that, if the notion of functional beauty makes any sense at all, then we have a pro tanto case for holding that moral defects in works of architecture can have aesthetic merits. (shrink)

Sigieri di Brabante, maestro di filosofia presso la facoltà delle arti dell'università di Parigi, fu uno dei principali esponenti di quell'"aristotelismo radicale" che costituì uno dei principali obiettivi delle condanne del vescovo Étienne Tempier del 1270 e del 1277. Il De aeternitate mundi è la testimonianza di un corso tenuto da Sigieri nel 1272 sul problema se la specie umana sia stata creata nel tempo. Vengono qui esaminate sia in generale le tesi di Sigieri riguardo ai diversi argomenti affrontati, sia (...) nello specifico il problema della causazione per intermediari. Quest'ultimo tema rimanda non solo alle altre opere in cui Sigieri ha affrontato tali problematiche, ma anche ad una tradizione che trae le sue origini nella filosofia greca classica e si sviluppa nel medioevo latino e arabo. Segue la traduzione del testo di Sigieri, condotta sull'edizione critica curata da Bernardo Carlos Bazán. (shrink)

In order to accommodate for the present shortage of oocyte donors, oocyte-donation programs place ads in college newspapers and provide large monetary compensation to encourage participation. Large compensation acts as a strong incentive for young women to undergo the potentially risky procedure of donation. In this enticing situation, it is particularly important for programs to fully inform prospective donors of the risks of the procedure so that they can accurately weigh the costs and benefits of donating. However, because oocyte-donor programs (...) must alleviate the shortage of donors if they wish to maintain a financially viable business, there is reason to fear that they may minimize or misrepresent risks when recruiting egg donors. In this pilot study, the risk information provided by programs (n=19) to prospective oocyte donors in a preliminary phone call inquiry was investigated. The majority of the programs provided incomplete and/or inaccurate risk information. Policy changes are recommended to reduce the potential for undue influence and to standardize and regulate the risk information provided to prospective egg donors. (shrink)

We give a new elementary proof of the comparison theorem relating $\sum^1_{n + 1}-\mathrm{AC}\uparrow$ and $\Pi^1_n -\mathrm{CA}\uparrow$ ; the proof does not use Skolem theories. By the same method we prove: a) $\sum^1_{n + 1}-\mathrm{DC} \uparrow \equiv (\Pi^1_n -CA)_{ , for suitable classes of sentences; b) $\sum^1_{n+1}-DC \uparrow$ proves the consistency of (Π 1 n -CA) ω k, for finite k, and hence is stronger than $\sum^1_{n+1}-AC \uparrow$ . a) and b) answer a question of Feferman and Sieg.

is accounted for, among other things, in terms of particular relations between events (or states1) and places or times. Roughly speaking, an event α is said to occur in a place p (or interval t) if the spatial (temporal) extension of α is located in p (or t). Let the predicate ‘Occ’ denote such a relation. From this point of view, part of the content of the above sentences can be associated, respectively, with formulas such as.

Several scholars have recognized the limitations of theories of moral reasoning in explaining moral behavior. They have argued that moral behavior may also be influenced by moral identity, or how central morality is to one’s sense of self. This idea has been supported by findings that people who exemplify moral behavior tend to place more importance on moral traits when defining their self-concepts (Colby & Damon, 1995). This paper takes the next step of examining individual variation in a construct highly (...) associated with immoral behavior — psychopathy. In Study 1, we test the hypothesis that individuals with a greater degree of psychopathic traits have a weaker moral identity. Within a large online sample, we found that individuals who scored higher on a measure of psychopathic traits were less likely to base their self-concepts on moral traits. In Study 2, we test whether this reduced sense of moral identity can be attributed to differences in moral judgment, which is another factor that could influence immoral behavior. Our results indicated that the reduced sense of moral identity among more psychopathic individuals was independent of variation in moral judgment. These results suggest that individuals with psychopathic traits may display immoral behavior partially because they do not construe their personal identities in moral terms. (shrink)

Andrea Falcon's work is guided by the exegetical ideal of recreating the mind of Aristotle and his distinctive conception of the theoretical enterprise. In this concise exploration of the significance of the celestial world for Aristotle's science of nature, Falcon investigates the source of discontinuity between celestial and sublunary natures and argues that the conviction that the natural world exhibits unity without uniformity is the ultimate reason for Aristotle's claim that the heavens are made of a special body, unique (...) to them. This book presents Aristotle as a totally engaged, systematic investigator whose ultimate concern was to integrate his distinct investigations into a coherent interpretation of the world we live in, all the while mindful of human limitations to what can be known. Falcon reads in Aristotle the ambition of an extraordinarily curious mind and the confidence that that ambition has been largely fulfilled. (shrink)

I discuss Descartes’ metaphysics of selfhood, and relevant parts of contemporary philosophy regarding the first person. My two main concerns are the controversy that surrounds Descartes’ conception of conscientia, mistranslated as ‘consciousness’, and his conception of selfhood and its essential connection to conscientia. ‘I’-thoughts give rise to the most challenging philosophical questions. An answer to the questions concerning the peculiarities of the first person, self-identification and self-ascription, is to be found in Descartes’ notion of conscientia. His conception of selfhood insightfully (...) informs his conception of personhood. I offer a unified account of selfhood, conscientia, the first person, and personhood anchored in the self’s authority of reason and autonomy of freedom. (shrink)

This study presents a theory of causally complex configurations of antecedent conditions influencing the adoption versus non-adoption of international supplier ethical certification-standards. Using objective measures of antecedents and outcomes, a large-scale study of exporting firms in the cut-flower industry in two South American countries supports the theory. The theory includes the following and additional propositions. No single -antecedent condition is sufficient for accurately predicting a high membership score in outcome conditions; the outcome conditions include a firm’s adoption or rejection of (...) a product certification. No single -antecedent condition is necessary for accurately predicting high scores in the outcome condition. A few complex antecedent conditions are sufficient but the occurrence of each is not necessary for accurately predicting high scores in an outcome condition. Causal asymmetry of antecedent conditions indicating adoption versus non-adoption of specific ethical standards occurs—that is, causal conditions leading to rejection are not the mirror opposites of causal conditions leading to adoption. (shrink)

Most contemporary chemists consider quantum mechanics to be the foundational theory of their discipline, although few of the calculations that a strict reduction would seem to require have ever been produced. In this essay I discuss contemporary algebraic and diagrammatic representations of molecular systems derived from quantum mechanical models, specifically configuration interaction wavefunctions for ab initio calculations and molecular orbital energy diagrams. My aim is to suggest that recent dissatisfaction with reductive accounts of chemical theory may stem from both the (...) inability of standard accounts of reduction to incorporate the diverse forms of representation found in chemical practice and our philosophical predilection to analyze all connections between theories in terms of logical reduction. (shrink)

This introduction to the thematic section of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science on “Artificial Intelligence and Religion: Recent Advances and Future Directions” outlines the five articles by dividing them into two groups: the three that analyze the impact of recent advances in subsymbolic artificial intelligence (AI) on religion and theology, and the two that explore theological concepts in symbolic AI environments. These five articles are five steps toward a strong, deep, and interdisciplinary dialogue between the research in religion and (...) the research in AI. (shrink)

This paper reviews the uneven history of the relationship between Anthropology and Cognitive Science over the past 30 years, from its promising beginnings, followed by a period of disaffection, on up to the current context, which may lay the groundwork for reconsidering what Anthropology and (the rest of) Cognitive Science have to offer each other. We think that this history has important lessons to teach and has implications for contemporary efforts to restore Anthropology to its proper place within Cognitive Science. (...) The recent upsurge of interest in the ways that thought may shape and be shaped by action, gesture, cultural experience, and language sets the stage for, but so far has not fully accomplished, the inclusion of Anthropology as an equal partner. (shrink)

This article interprets Foucault’s intellectual project by analysing the relation between his understanding of critique and the political conditions of subjectivation out of which it emerged. After reviewing some of the most typical criticisms of Foucault’s work, the argument shows in what sense he conceived of critique as a form of resistance and how the latter, in turn, was theorised as a force co-extensive to the power it counters. The paper goes on to argue that his theory of resistance is (...) not necessarily to be viewed as a metaphysical representation of the immutable nature of political struggle, but might well be interpreted in performative terms, i.e. as a strategic re-inscription of existing political-discursive formations. More precisely, the analysis shows in what way Foucault’s articulation of critique represented an attempt to displace the forms of subjectivation that underpin anthropological thought and the government of the self in the modern age. (shrink)

Critical algorithm scholarship has demonstrated the difficulties of attributing accountability for the actions and effects of algorithmic systems. In this commentary, we argue that we cannot stop at denouncing the lack of accountability for algorithms and their effects but must engage the broader systems and distributed agencies that algorithmic systems exist within; including standards, regulations, technologies, and social relations. To this end, we explore accountability in “the Generated Detective,” an algorithmically generated comic. Taking up the mantle of detectives ourselves, we (...) investigate accountability in relation to this piece of experimental fiction. We problematize efforts to effect accountability through transparency by undertaking a simple operation: asking for permission to re-publish a set of the algorithmically selected and modified words and images which make the frames of the comic. Recounting this process, we demonstrate slippage between the “complication” of the algorithm and the obscurity of the legal and institutional structures in which it exists. (shrink)

Gendler reformulated the so-called imaginability puzzle in terms of authorial breakdown. The main idea behind this move was to isolate the essential features displayed by the alleged problematic cases and to specify a puzzle general enough to be applied to a variety of different types of imaginative resistance. I offer various criticisms of Gendler’s approach to imaginative resistance that also raise some more general points on the recent literature on the topic.

Larry Shiner iniciadas a principios del siglo XVIII tienen, en el pensamiento filosófico, una tradición un tanto más antigua pues, aun cuando no existía una pregunta explícita sobre qué es el arte, había, ya desde Platón, una profunda reflexión respecto a la creación artística, así como sobre el papel que el artista y su obra desempeñaban dentro de su sociedad, papel que para el filósofo adquiría un carácter negativo cuando se ocupaba de la imitación de las formas o ideas verdaderas; (...) es decir, cuando se trataba del arte imitativo, ya que al ser el mundo una copia de dichas ideas y, a su vez, ser esta copia la representada por el artista en su obra, esta última sería, entonces, la copia de una copia, la representación de algo que ya de por sí no es verdadero. (shrink)

In this essay a theoretical comparison is presented between the perspective developed by Heidegger in Being and time regarding authentic existence and the analogous one afforded by the ethics of Spinoza. The bearing thesis is that these two perspectives have a common theoretical presupposition: the essence of every entity is founded in its rooting in the world or nature in which it exists. Nevertheless, it appears that the results which the two authors reach are opposite. While Heidegger develops a radically (...) contingentist approach that through the concept of being-for-death and anticipatory decision transforms being-in the-world itself into a mere unfounded accident, Spinoza’s ontology works out this affiliation in terms of absolute necessitarianism, ultimately identifying the essence of every entity with the activity that it carries out in nature. This leads to a diametrically opposite conception of freedom: while for Heidegger this must be thought of first of all as emancipation from dispersion and dejection in the world, for Spinoza being free means being adequate causes of the effects that necessarily derive from one’s nature.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Where the “They” LiesFeminist Reflection on Pedagogical InnovationAndrea Janae SholtzAs feminist philosophers attempt to articulate problems of marginalization based on race, class, gender, sexuality, we navigate a complex and confusing set of paradigms of exclusion and inclusion. A significant barrier is that binary logic is difficult to eradicate even in calls for greater inclusivity, and the language and mentality of “us” versus “them,” where “them” indicates an imposing force, (...) social institution, or privileged section of the population “doing” something to the “us” remains. Pedagogically, this poses a difficulty in that, often, we are teaching not the marginalized but those who may feel themselves implicated as the “They.” Either as male, white, financially well-off, American, politically conservative, or some combination thereof, students who are presented with these critical materials many times bridle under the supposed accusing eye of the text. Closing the distance from the immediate rejection of the material and to a genuine encounter is the key issue. The question is how can one thoughtfully model critical practice that engages students rather than constructing them as the “They”?What is the nature of the “They”? How can references to the “They” be anything other than gross generalizations? Martin Heidegger has a robust conceptual understanding of the “They” as an existential possibility of Dasein. Dasein initially, and for the most part, understands itself as composed of everyday interpretations of the world indicative of the “they-self.” Significantly, everydayness also constitutes a mode of relating to others, that of indifference or passing each other by (Heidegger 1996, 116). Heidegger calls this the [End Page 72] inauthentic mode of Dasein, juxtaposing this to Dasein’s authentic existence, which is not simply a move toward a greater individuality but toward the “We.” Aside from providing a theoretical platform for discussing the problematic of the “us/them” binary, the transformation in attunement that leads beyond the “They” toward the “We” has important ethical implications, which I will link to feminist Gloria Anzaldúa’s understanding of mestiza consciousness. Their similarity consists in the emphasis on a new mode of thinking as a necessary condition for moving away from the superficiality of thought that hinders us from truly encountering each other and our world/s.Heidegger argues that we are indebted to a philosophical legacy that takes the subject as the primary basis of analysis, separating it from the surrounding world to determine its traits and characteristics. We are unable to see that a “subject without a world ‘is’ not initially and is also never given” (Heidegger 1996, 109). The “who” of Dasein is never reached, because we fail to think through what it actually means to be in the world. In Being and Time, chapter 4, “Being-in-the-world as Being-With and Being a Self: the They,” Heidegger discusses Dasein as a relational Self. Making sense of the inextricable link between these terms clarifies the “who of Dasein,” and, by association, who the “They” is.Dasein is, first and foremost, Being-in-the-world, where world indicates the referential totality of significance. We are never in the world in isolation, therefore Mitdasein (Being-with-others) is implicit to Being-in-the-world and an existential condition of Dasein. Dasein shares a world (now a Mitwelt) irrevocably. Sharing a world with others seems so obvious that we do not take the time to interrogate what it actually entails. This, in turn, conceals the very effort to understand the “who” of Dasein, requiring analysis of how we are with other Daseins.Heidegger begins by interrogating everyday existence. Heidegger says that deficiency and averageness characterize everyday being with one another and misleads us to interpret Mitdasein as a pure objective presence of several subjects, dividing “us” from them. The subject of everydayness is the “They.” The “They” is typically understood as not myself, but this is where one would be mistaken in terms of Heidegger’s analysis. In a passage crucial to understanding Mitdasein, Heidegger writes, “The ‘others’ does not mean everybody else but me—those from whom the I distinguishes itself. They are, rather, those from whom one mostly does not distinguish oneself, those among whom one is, too” (Heidegger... (shrink)

Philosophers have been quarrelling for ages over the correct understanding of the identity relation and its applications, but seldom have they discussed the identity of foods, including beverages under this herd. Taking wine as a working example, the present study shows that foods call attention over unnoticed metaphysical difficulties, most importantly the role of authenticity in ascertaining the identity of an individual and the possibility of identity being determined by a collectivity of people. More in details, the paper examines the (...) relationship between a rank of wines and its specific instances, that is, on what grounds some wine is of a certain rank. A “rank of wines” here stands for wines that are identical under some respect, be it the area of production, the style, the color, the variety, and so forth. Extant wine labels are taken as the best candidates to carve out a class of wine ranks that is metaphysically prior to any other; the analysis focuses on geographic indications because of the extensive discussion they have generated, but the morals here drawn extend also to other classes of wine ranks, such as those utilized by wine experts. After some introductory remarks (§1), the case is made that the identity of wines is established through judgments of authenticity (§2). Issues of authenticity are then discussed through the special case of geographic indications (§3). Two different views on how to justify the attribution of a geographic indication are presented and criticized; those rest respectively on terroir (§3.1) and chemical composition (§3.2). The last section (§4) argues for a conventionalist view on wine identity. Distancing itself from conventionalist proposals advanced to favor industrial wine production, the view defended here ties the identity of a wine to collective expert judgments of authenticity that are based on the extensive pleasure of the product. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 2 Seiten: 144-168.