Epicurus on the Self reconstructs a part of Epicurean ethics which only survives on the fragmentary papyrus rolls excavated from an ancient library in Herculaneum, On Nature XXV. The aim of this book is to contribute to a deeper understanding of Epicurus' moral psychology, ethics and of its robust epistemological framework. The book also explores how the notion of the self emerges in Epicurus' struggle to express the individual perspective of oneself in the process of one's holistic self-reflection as an (...) individual psychophysical being. (shrink)

-- 5. Sağım solum sobe -- 6. Ulusal kültür savaşı -- 7. Sosyaliz, asıl şimdi -- 8. Aydınlar savaşı -- 9. Kadınlar savaşı.

:In this paper, I examine the concept of.

In landscape ecology spatial descriptors (or indices) can be used to characterize habitats. Some of these descriptors can be used for habitat's ranking; this ranking is very important for conservation purposes. We would like to show that two traditional descriptors, namely the compactness and interior-to-edge ratio can give contradictory results. Being the second one is a more relevant descriptor, we would like to propose to avoid the further use the compactness in habitat's ranking.

Different summarized shape indices, like mean shape index (MSI) and area weighted mean shape index (AWMSI) can change over multiple size scales. This variation is important to describe scale heterogeneity of landscapes, but the exact mathematical form of the dependence is rarely known. In this paper, the use of fractal geometry (by the perimeter and area Hausdorff dimensions) made us able to describe the scale dependence of these indices. Moreover, we showed how fractal dimensions can be deducted from existing MSI (...) and AWMSI data. In this way, the equality of a multiscale tabulated MSI and AWMSI dataset and two scale-invariant fractal dimensions has been demonstrated. (shrink)

Henry Sidgwick has famously stated that the conflict between self-interest (prudence) and morality cannot be resolved: a dualism of practical reason is thus established. As is well-known, Sidgwick was distraught with this conclusion thinking that only the existence of God can resolve the dualism. Contemporary thinkers prefer to avoid this way out and argue either that. egoism is not rationally justifiable, or that self-interest and morality always point in the same direction, or that properly understanding the conflict also shows that (...) the dualism can be avoided. We take a different route. We agree with Sidgwick that some part of practical reason might indeed be discordant but we provide examples when what appears to be discord is in fact harmony on a higher level. We call these sets of. conflict cases pockets of harmony. We first show how these pockets form and what shape they take before moving on to considering their scope. At this point we confront a possible objection using an adapted version of Arrow’s impossibility theorem. Once this objection is out of the way, we conclude with a discussion of exactly what we have shown: what is the nature of our solution, and how it relates to recent skeptical positions taking their inspiration from Sidgwick’s dualism. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a solution to the Capacity/Equality Puzzle. The puzzle holds that an account of the franchise may adequately capture at most two of the following: (1) a political equality-based account of the franchise, (2) a capacity-based account of disenfranchising children, and (3) universal adult enfranchisement. To resolve the puzzle, I provide a complex liberal egalitarian justification of a moral requirement to disenfranchise children. I show that disenfranchising children is permitted by both the proper political liberal and (...) the proper political egalitarian understandings of the relationship between cognitive capacity and the franchise. Further, I argue, disenfranchising children is required by a minimalistic, procedural principle of collective competence in political decision-making. At the same time, I show that political equality requires the enfranchisement of all adults, regardless of cognitive capacities, and that the collective competence principle does not ground adult disenfranchisement. This justifies the progressive legal trend that holds the capacity-based disenfranchisement of adults to be incompatible with liberal democratic principles. (shrink)

There are a number of well-established concepts explaining decision-making. The sociology of wise practice suggests that thinking preferences like the use of intuition form a cornerstone of administrators’ virtuous practice and phronesis is a likely candidate to explain this behaviour. This contribution uses conceptual and theoretical resources from the behavioural sciences, management science as well as philosophy to account for individual level differences of employees regarding thinking preferences in administrative professions. The analysis empirically investigates the behavioural dimension of the preference (...) for intuition vs the preference for deliberation to cast light on three different intuitive markers present among individuals who also prefer to use deliberation. We explore possible explanations for the differences and similarities of our global sample of 2227 workplace respondents who conceptually represent phronetic practitioners. The results show that many phronetic practitioners prefer the intuitive marker of unconscious thought, besides using deliberation. (shrink)

In my paper, I try to summarize Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the method of political thinking, following them through their genesis. My fundamental assumption is that although she had been preoccupied with the issue before (at least from 1957), she became more seriously interested in it after the controversy following the publication of the Eichmann volume. It is generally known that Arendt believed to have found the pattern for the method of political thinking in Kant’s third critique, the one about (...) judgment; more precisely in the Kantian description of the reflective judgment. This served as a pattern for Arendt for what she sometimes called representative thinking or opinion. If, on the other hand, we examine Arendt’s referring thoughts in their genesis we also come to realize why that was the case. In my opinion, Arendt looked in Kant’s work for a form of political thinking that remained impartial, in other words, it was not committed to one political cause or another, yet did not break its relations to politics, remaining entirely political. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show that the diachronic temporality introduced in the second major work of Levinas is profoundly influenced by the genetic dimension of the Husserlian account of time. It is argued that the different phenomena of this genetic-diachronic temporality, like the past which was never present, the originary retention, and the unpredictable present, are sustaining not just the central idea of Otherwise than being, that of an originary ethical subject, but alsothe description of the relation with the other, (...) and the phenomenology of language present in this work. (shrink)

(OPEN ACCESS) In this article, I explore the implications of three moral grounds for the justification of supported voting – respect as opacity, respect as equal status, and respect as political care. For each ground, I ask whether it justifies surrogate voting for voters unable to either communicate or give effect to their electoral judgments, due to some cognitive or communicative disability. (Henceforth: incommunicability cases.) I argue that respect as opacity does not permit surrogate voting, and equal status does not (...) justify such support – although the latter account can make sense of the value loss involved in the persistent non-participation of individuals with cognitive and communicative disabilities. Finally, I argue that an account of supported voting based on the ethics of political care can accommodate a pro tanto moral permission to provide surrogate voting as a form of support in incommunicability cases, and it can account for the inclusive approach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to supported decision-making. However, I show that in incommunicability cases, what the political community and individual caretakers ultimately owe to adult fellow citizens as equal members of the political community is some adequate form of political care – but not necessarily surrogate voting. (shrink)

(OPEN ACCESS) This paper offers a novel substantive justification for mandatory electoral quotas—e.g., gender or racial quotas—and a new methodological approach to their justification. Substantively, I argue for a political egalitarian account of electoral quotas. Methodologically, based on this account and a political egalitarian grounding of political participatory rights, I offer an alternative to the External Restriction Approach to the justification of electoral quotas. The External Restriction Approach sees electoral quotas as at best justified restrictions on political participatory rights. I (...) argue for the Internal Restriction Approach instead, which can justify electoral quotas by specifying the pro tanto scope of political participatory rights rather than by justifying restrictions on the pro tanto scope of these rights. On this approach, adequately set electoral quotas do not even conflict with and are not balanced against political participatory rights, while electoral quotas—when justified—are pro tanto required rather than merely permitted. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the narrative aspect of Seneca’s idea of self-transformation. It compares Seneca’s viewpoint with some modern notions of the narrative self to highlight some parallels and significant differences between the ancient and modern conceptions and it establishes the reading of some parts of De Brev. Vit. in the context of other passages as concerned with the narrative self. The paper argues, amongst other points, that in Ep. 83.1–3, Seneca extends the practice of meditatio (ethically directed self-examination) by (...) incorporating the construction of a narrative self into this process, in dual roles, as examiner and examined. It concludes that Seneca expected us to avail ourselves of a similar self-assessment based on a dialogue with philosophical texts. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein repeatedly called religion and faith “madness”, “folly”, etc. However, this does not mean that he considered it irrational or meaningless. Rather, he saw in it a way of thinking and speaking, a “language-game”, that was not explicitly rational, but nevertheless meaningful, and in which there were “entirely different connections” than normal between individual statements. Nor can the language of faith be regarded as conventional, according to Wittgenstein, even if approached from the point of view of the nature of (...) the statements it contains. If, for example, we think that theological statements are factual statements (as if they refer only to existing things or objects), then this language immediately becomes meaningless. The aim of my study is to analyze the “grammar” of this language (the language of faith or religion), using Wittgenstein’s notes from different times, paragraphs of his published works, comments made during university lectures, etc., and to describe the correct use of words in it. (shrink)

Universal por estar no direito e particular por estar fora do direito, o “sujeito” de referência deste trabalho é o “autista”. Esta escolha garantiu a definição do sistema social, que foi concebido segundo o modo como os autistas se viam ou eram vistos. O sistema teórico foi delimitado segundo tradições intelectuais que problematizam o “sujeito” de acordo com questões formuladas pelos campos empíricos. O esquema metodológico visa a conhecer o “sujeito” por dentro dos sistemas e entre eles. O objetivo teórico (...) é pensar o “sujeito” considerando que o universal do direito não resulta da pluralidade do “sujeito”. (shrink)

High-speed decision making is assumed to be crucial for leadership in the digital era. Yet there has to be some hard data on whether leaders in the information age have confidence in the skills and motivation of the people around them. Dual process theories of cognition have advanced the study of wise decision-making. However, both the use of intuitive and the use of deliberative thinking processes have been associated with more ethical behaviour. To spot the distinctiveness implicated by different types (...) of cognitive processing, 7000 participants responded on Dual process Decision-Making Styles, the Big Five Personality Questionnaire, together with a survey considering trusting propensity. The results showed that the distinct decision-making preferences differ by trust in people due to the role of personality. ‘Extroversion’, ‘Openness’, and ‘Agreeableness’ personality types predict greater degrees of trust. In the wise decision-making profile, personality type has no significant effect on trusting people. The deliberative profile has the lowest, the wiser profile has a medium, and the intuitive profile has the highest level of trust in people. In conclusion, the wiser profiles have a certain level of trust in people independent of their personalities. These findings extend the knowledge of the relationship between dual process theories of cognition, individual differences in personality and trusting propensity. It seems that to promote trust in organizations and in societies the leadership skill of phronesis is of particular importance. (shrink)

The paper deals with a charge that is often made against consequentialist moral theories: that they are unacceptably demanding. This is called the Overdemandingness Objection. The paper first distinguishes three interpretations of the Objection as based on the three dimensions of moral demands: scope, content, and authority. It is then argued that neither the scope, nor the content-based understanding of the Objection is viable. Constraining the scope of consequentialism is neither helpful, nor justified, hence the pervasiveness of consequentialism cannot be (...) the ground for the Objection. Although recent approaches interpret the Objection as a claim about the excessively demanding content of consequentialism, it is argued that the stringency of consequentialism is also unproblematic insofar as demandingness is concerned. These results show that the only way to put the Objection is by focusing on the inescapability of consequentialism. The Objection thus takes the following form: consequentialism is overdemanding because it requires us, with decisive force, to do things that we do not have decisive reason to perform. However, in the last part of the paper it is shown that defending this interpretation of the Objection is at best an open-ended and perilous enterprise. The paper concludes that the case for authority is weak: although this is the only defensible way to advocate the Objection, its successful defence depends on the truth of further substantial philosophical positions. (shrink)

This article describes how a folk song retrieval system uses a gesture-based interface to recognize Kodaly hand signs and formulate search queries.

The paper investigates the notion of friendship in Aristotle’s moral philosophy. The key issue here is what role Aristotle attributes to the ‘other’ as friend in the self-appreciation of the moral individual. The discussion proceeds in three main steps: first I chart the anthropological connections of the Aristotelian notion of friendship; then I delineate in detail the discussions of self-knowledge and self-cognition in the framework of Aristotle’s ontology and philosophy of perception; finally, I set out what consequences Aristotle’s repeated assertion (...) that ‘the friend is another self’ has for the self-understanding of the person. Through these steps I argue for the conclusion that the friend, as the ‘other’, plays an indispensable role, on the one hand in the formation of virtues which are required for right action, on the other in allowing the person to reach self-consciousness and freedom, both of them prerequisites for happiness in the full sense of the term. (shrink)

The paper attempts to reconstruct the intellectual frame- work of British liberal tradition focusing on two major problems of it, namely the problem of justice and that of political liberty. The liberal interpretation of justice is meant to tolerate all possible individual views of good life, consequently it cannot be established on one of them. This means that the interpretation of justice shouldn’t be derived from some philosophy, as any interpretation has its basis in the political tradition of modernity. Conse- (...) quently democracy always must have priority to philoso- phy (R. Rorty). On the matter of political liberty, Isaiah Berlin defends a “negative” concept of freedom, the freedom of choice without any pressure, while Ch. Taylor sustains the Positive one. The debate between defenders of negative and positive freedom seeks the answer for a question formulated for the first time by John Stuart Mill: why individuals - even if they are free - act usually rational? (shrink)

I summarize here the recent scientific achievements exploring the causal chain of solar activity. Following the causal chain has led to a novel comprehensive picture, including system-level regulation of local processes, such as the mass fiows in the solar interior I call attention to some crucial aspects of solar activity and present a series of facts that demand a revision of the old picture, according to which the Sun is a mere "hot ball of gas." For example, the magnetic changes (...) of solar activity are accelerated more than a billion times faster in comparison to theoretical expectations. The closer aspects of the comprehensive picture show that the mass fiows accelerating magnetic changes deviate significantly from their physically prescribed behavior corresponding to the given physical conditions of the solar interior. I argue that they must be orchestrated in a highly sophisticated manner. Another novel aspect that has been found is that the dynamo process is not enough to give an account of the magnetic cycle, since a regulative factor is needed to make the dynamo a machine. I show that the existence of a machine within the Sun introduces novel conceptual issues transcending the conceptualframework of physics. The novel problems have guided my search for the ultimate causes of solar activity toward biology. I present arguments showing the difference between the thermodynamic behavior of far-from-equilibrium open systems and the non-physical behavior of solar activity initiated by biological causes determining and organizing quantum uncertainties. Remarkably, the results fit adequately with the Whiteheadean view of organizational duality and show that the Sun can be regarded as a compound individual. (shrink)

Phenomenological theories have a long history in undermining the traditional opposition between mind and body. According to them, the material, viz. the corporal can serve as a place for the processes of meaning-formation, i.e., as a condition of possibility for any set of relationships forming a body of meaning. In this paper, this manifests itself through the fact that the basic concepts related to corporeality, e.g., perception, movement etc., are the conditions of possibility for any construction of meaning and consciousness (...) process, as also shown by contemporary neuroscience and communication theory in the case of intelligence and communication. However, this was already known to Aristotle, long before the advent of modern neuroscience, but the stakes were even higher for him: the issue of corporeality is itself problematic in terms of determining its boundaries, as the limits of the Self (viz. my body) merge with those of the world. The situation is similar to the passive and active synthesis of Husserl and also to Heidegger’s twofold openness of the Dasein, conflating the boundaries of the Self and the limits of the world for our human being-there, or consciousness. (shrink)

From a juridical standpoint, Kant ardently upholds the state's right to impose the death penalty in accordance with the law of retribution. At the same time, from an ethical standpoint, Kant maintains a strict proscription against suicide. The author proposes that this latter position is inconsistent with and undercuts the former. However, Kant's division between external (juridical) and internal (moral) lawgiving is an obstacle to any argument against Kant's endorsement of capital punishment based on his own disapprobation of suicide. Nevertheless, (...) Kant's basic conception of autonomy underlies both of these otherwise distinct forms of lawgiving, such that acts of suicide and capital punishment are rendered equally irrational within his overall framework. (shrink)

According to the Desire-Based Reasons Model reasons for action are provided by desires. Many, however, are critical about the Model holding an alternative view of practical reason, which is often called valued-based. In this paper I consider one particular attempt to refute the Model, which advocates of the valued-based view often appeal to: the idea of reason-based desires. The argument is built up from two premises. The first claims that desires are states that we have reason to have. The second (...) argues that desires do not add to the stock of reasons the agent has for having them. Together the two theses entail that desires are based on reasons, which they transmit but to which they cannot add. In the paper I deal with a counterexample to the second premise: tie-breaking desires. I first distinguish two interesting cases and argue that only the second challenges the premise. Then I move onto analyze this challenge by focusing on Ruth Chang’s recent employment of it. I show that contrary to its counterintuitive appearance, the challenge can be sustained. However, I also argue that Chang overlooks the full potential of one particular response to the challenge: the introduction of higher-order reasons determining the normative significance of these desires. At the same time, I show that this response has a problem that Chang does not consider. As a result, the response can only partially disarm the challenge of tie-breaking desires; or not at all, depending on what significance we attribute to the counterexamples. (shrink)

Morality is demanding; this is a platitude. It is thus no surprise when we find that moral theories too, when we look into what they require, turn out to be demanding. However, there is at least one moral theory – consequentialism – that is said to be beset by this demandingness problem. This calls for an explanation: Why only consequentialism? This then leads to related questions: What is the demandingness problematic about? What exactly does it claim? Finally, there is the (...) question of what we do if we accept that there is a demandingness problem for consequentialism: How can consequentialists respond? The present chapter sets out to answer these questions (or at least point to how they could be answered). (shrink)

The paper takes as its starting point John Rawls’s claim that the social bases of self-respect is perhaps the most important primary good the distribution of which is governed by his principles of justice. There has been some debate about this claim in the literature and this debate has included important clarifications regarding the concept(s) involved. However, I think this discussion hasn’t gone deep enough and this – relative – lack of depth has or at least might have important implications (...) for our theory of distributive justice. To show this, I begin with Rawls’s admittedly sketchy remarks about the significance of self-respect in his theory. After this I briefly describe the debate that followed: what emerges here is a distinction between two kinds of self-respect. While I think this distinction is in good order, I also think and subsequently argue, building on the work of Robin Dillon and Anna Bortolan, that it only scratches the surface of the complex phenomenon of self-respect. In particular, as these authors show, the self-respect complex is, in fact, a multi-layered phenomenon and the distinction as used misses its fundamental level: basal self-respect (Dillon) or self-esteem (Bortolan). In the finishing part of the paper I discuss these two proposals to show that Bortolan’s version is the better one. All this then has clear relevance for the adjoining debate in political philosophy: all those who want to give an important role to self-respect in their theory of justice have potentially focused on the wrong target so far. This, I conclude, might well give rise to a new feminist critique of liberal egalitarian justice. (shrink)

Elsewhere we have responded to the so-called demandingness objection to consequentialism – that consequentialism is excessively demanding and is therefore unacceptable as a moral theory – by introducing the theoretical position we call institutional consequentialism. This is a consequentialist view that, however, requires institutional systems, and not individuals, to follow the consequentialist principle. In this paper, we first introduce and explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and the main reasons that support it. In the remainder of the paper, we turn (...) to the global dimension where the first and foremost challenge is to explain how institutional consequentialism can deal with unsolved global problems such as poverty, war and climate change. In response, following the general idea of institutional consequentialism, we draw up three alternative routes: relying on existing national, transnational and supranational institutions; promoting gradual institutional reform; and advocating radical changes to the status quo. We evaluate these routes by describing normatively relevant properties of the existing global institutional system, as well as by showing what institutional consequentialism can say about alternatives to it: a world government; and multi-layered sovereignty/neo-medieval system. (shrink)

Hungarian right-wing populists have been applying decolonial rhetoric in their conspiracy theories over the past three decades. Understanding their resistance against the ‘civilising' mission of ‘the West' – or recently ‘Brussels' – needs specific tools. By applying standpoint theory, our interest is in the domestication of globally existing conspiracy theories. Instead of imposing an external rationale upon conspiracy theory thinking, we seek to understand the conspiracy thinking from its' own epistemological standpoint/positioning. Extending our analysis of the recently successful political party (...) Mi Hazánk Mozgalom (Our Homeland Movement) we analyse their election program, titled Virradat (Dawn), and how an East-Central European, semi-peripheric standpoint can be revealed from the text through the conspiracy theories utilized by the party. Our claim is that the utilisation of conspiracy theories in East-Central Europe can be interpreted as discursive tools of the resistance of a well-planned colonisation. We show how decolonial rhetoric is present in their election program and how it is tied to conspiracy theories which may be globally known, yet having their own, specific Hungarian features, deeply embedded in the country’s history and its radical- and far-right, populist political culture. (shrink)