There is now a renewed concern for moral psychology among moral philosophers. Moreover, contemporary philosophers interested in virtue, moral responsibility and moral progress regularly refer to Plato and Aristotle, the two founding fathers of ancient ethics. The book contains eleven chapters by distinguished scholars which showcase current research in Greek ethics. Four deal with Plato, focusing on the Protagoras, Euthydemus, Symposium and Republic, and discussing matters of literary presentation alongside the philosophical content. The four chapters on Aristotle address problems such (...) as the doctrine of the mean, the status of rules, equity and the tension between altruism and egoism in Aristotelian eudaimonism. A contrast to classical Greek ethics is presented by two chapters reconstructing Epicurus' views on the emotions and moral responsibility as well as on moral development. The final chapter on personal identity in Empedocles shows that the concern for moral progress is already palpable in Presocratic philosophy. (shrink)

Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural (...) aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match the future. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the objections against hate crimes defined as separate offenses and in terms of group animus are misguided and are based upon a mistaken view of human action that does...

Describing actions entails that relations between objects are discovered. A pervasively neural account of this process requires that fundamental problems are solved: the neural pointer problem, the binding problem, and the problem of generating discrete processing steps from time-continuous neural processes. We present a prototypical solution to these problems in a neural dynamic model that comprises dynamic neural fields holding representations close to sensorimotor surfaces as well as dynamic neural nodes holding discrete, language-like representations. Making the connection between these two (...) types of representations enables the model to describe actions as well as to perceptually ground movement phrases—all based on real visual input. We demonstrate how the dynamic neural processes autonomously generate the processing steps required to describe or ground object-oriented actions. By solving the fundamental problems of neural pointing, binding, and emergent discrete processing, the model may be a first but critical step toward a systematic neural processing account of higher cognition. (shrink)

How does the human brain link relational concepts to perceptual experience? For example, a speaker may say “the cup to the left of the computer” to direct the listener's attention to one of two cups on a desk. We provide a neural dynamic account for both perceptual grounding, in which relational concepts enable the attentional selection of objects in the visual array, and for the generation of descriptions of the visual array using relational concepts. In the model, activation in neural (...) populations evolves dynamically under the influence of both inputs and strong interaction as formalized in dynamic field theory. Relational concepts are modeled as patterns of connectivity to perceptual representations. These generalize across the visual array through active coordinate transforms that center the representation of target objects in potential reference objects. How the model perceptually grounds or generates relational descriptions is probed in 104 simulations that systematically vary the spatial and movement relations employed, the number of feature dimensions used, and the number of matching and nonmatching objects. We explain how sequences of decisions emerge from the time‐ and state‐continuous neural dynamics, how relational hypotheses are generated and either accepted or rejected, followed by the selection of new objects or the generation of new relational hypotheses. Its neural realism distinguishes the model from information processing accounts, its capacity to autonomously generate sequences of processing steps distinguishes it from deep neural network accounts. The model points toward a neural dynamic theory of higher cognition. (shrink)

I address a longstanding problem in Kant scholarship: how is Kant’s use of the term ‘mechanism’ to be understood? It seems that Kant uses that term in a variety of ways, from a narrow sense (“motion communicated between matter”) to a very wide sense (“any causation that is not noumenal”). I argue that Kant has a unified conception of mechanism, where the wider senses are to be understood in light of a conception of nature according to which all of nature (...) is purely mechanistic in the narrow sense. In contrast to his mechanistic predecessors, Kant holds that this conception of nature is an idea, an imaginary end-point of science that we need for orientation but can only approach asymptotically. (shrink)

En tant que pratique religieuse, la prière se révèle dans le monde contemporain comme profondément diverse : comme l’observait déjà Marcel Mauss, ses transformations ont accompagné la sécularisation des sociétés et l’individuation des croyances, et elle est restée au cœur des formes les plus traditionnelles de piété. Cette « plasticité » de la prière lui a souvent valu d’être considérée depuis bien des horizons disciplinaires comme pratique religieuse « par excellence », ou phénomène religieu...

Rorty was one of the great dissolvers of dualisms, but strangely this iconoclasm ended when it came to liberal democracy. Here he held fast to the most stubborn of dualisms in political thought, a simple dichotomy of the public and the private, and used it, unsuccessfully, to resolve questions concerning the place of religion in modern democratic politics. Yet the philosophical basis of Rorty's pragmatism both undercuts two common ways of spelling out the relationship between religion and the polity in (...) liberalism and makes his use of the public/private dichotomy impossible. By means of an internal critique, I argue for a Habermasian corrective. (shrink)

A central task of climate justice is to agree upon a just distribution of the right to emit greenhouse gases. According to the equal per capita shares view, the right to emit should be divided equally between every inhabitant of Earth, since to emit is to use up the resource of atmospheric absorptive capacity, and this is a resource to which no one person has any stronger claim than any other. The fact that a significant proportion of the Earth’s ability (...) to absorb and sequester greenhouse gases actually comes not from the atmosphere, but from terrestrial climate sinks that are located within national borders, and that are therefore plausibly subject to legitimate territorial claims, poses a serious challenge to the intuitive egalitarian simplicity of the equal per capita shares view. A defence of this view, then, is tantamount to a defence of the redistribution of terrestrial sink capacity, and therefore must involve either (1) an argument against the legitimacy of territorial claims to terrestrial sink capacity, or (2) an argument for why legitimate territorial claims to terrestrial sink capacity should nevertheless be ignored in favour of an equal per capita distribution of emissions shares. One strategy for doing so involves applying Charles Beitz’s resource redistribution principle to terrestrial sink capacity. Some authors have argued that this strategy will fail due to important differences between the nature of ‘conventional’ natural resources, and the nature of a resource link climate sink capacity. In this paper, I consider five arguments to this effect that seek to establish the legitimacy of territorial claims to terrestrial sink capacity. Respectively, they appeal to attachment, identity, self-determination, improvement and fairness in order to do so. I argue that each one either fails to establish the legitimacy of territorial claims to terrestrial sink capacity, or, where they do plausibly establish legitimacy, they do so in a way that renders them vulnerable to type-(2) objections that suggest territorial claims to terrestrial sink capacity should nevertheless be ignored. I conclude that, if one is willing to adopt the resource redistribution principle, a just distribution of emissions shares need not respect territorial claims to terrestrial sink capacity. (shrink)

The issue of statelessness poses problems for the statist approach to the philosophy of immigration. Despite the fact that the statist approach claims to constrain the state’s right to exclude with human rights considerations, the arguments statists offer for the right of states to determine their own immigration policies would also justify citizenship rules that would render some children stateless. Insofar as rendering a child stateless is best characterized as a violation of human rights and insofar as some states have (...) direct responsibility for causing such harm, the problem of non-refugee stateless children points to greater constraints than most statists accept on states’ right to determine their own rules for membership. While statists can ultimately account for the right not to be rendered stateless, recognizing these additional human rights constraints ultimately weakens the core of the statist position. (shrink)

Uncertainty is the name of the game in philosopher Kenneth W Goodman’s attempt to apply ethics to evidence based medicine . Indeed, the book is as much about epistemology, or the study of how we learn and know about the world, as it is about ethics. Goodman’s desire is to understand what constitutes proof, or evidence, that a particular treatment is better than others. One of the ethical connections is that a failure to use such treatments is blameworthy.EBM is a (...) concept that is getting a great deal of attention these days. At least two factors drive this …. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

While corpus studies have shown that discourse connectives that convey the same coherence relation can display subtle differences, research on online discourse processing has only focused on a rather limited set of connectives. Yet, different connectives – for example, rare or polyfunctional ones – might elicit different reading patterns. In order to explore this assumption, we test the robustness of discourse processing for French native speakers by measuring the way they process causal and concessive sentences that are conveyed by either (...) an appropriate or inappropriate connective. Throughout three experiments, we change important characteristics of the connectives: we first test frequently used connectives, secondly less frequent ones, and finally less frequent connectives that are polyfunctional and for which different functions clearly compete. Our results show that the processing for incoherent items was affected for all connectives, however readers showed altered reading fluency when infrequent connectives were used. We conclude that discourse processing is quite robust and that readers are able to insert meaning conveyed by rare connectives while still showing the highest reading ease with frequent connectives. (shrink)

Taking a phrase from President Clinton’s successful presidential campaign in 1992, this book could have just as easily been called It’s About Trust, Stupid. In his book, David A Shore, PhD, associate dean and founding director of the Trust Initiative at the Harvard School of Public Health, presents a convincing argument for the importance of trust in healthcare delivery.Shore is equally convincing in arguing that people have a lack of trust in the healthcare system in the United States. To make (...) this point, he cites studies showing that while many continue to trust doctors and nurses, the trust in healthcare delivery itself …. (shrink)

This essay discusses how, for Hegel, freedom can be realized in nature in a rudimentary fashion in solar systems. This solves a problem in Kant’s account of freedom, namely, the problem that Kant only gives a negative argument for why freedom is not impossible but does not give a positive account of how freedom is real. I give a novel account of Kant’s negative argument. Then, I show how, according to Hegel, solar systems can be considered as exhibiting freedom in (...) a rudimentary fashion. Finally, I lay out how Hegel systematically develops this point about the freedom of solar systems in the ‘Mechanism’-chapter of the Science of Logic. In doing so, he uses Kant’s negative argument in a ‘purified’ form to arrive at an account of an ‘intimate token-type relation’ between the planets in a solar system and the law that governs their motion. The essay as a whole provides a concrete example of how Hegel is an inheritor and radicalizer of Kant, both with respect to freedom’s reality and with respect to philosophical method. (shrink)

Examines the religious philosophy of John Hick, with an emphasis on his attempt to show that theistic claims are factually significant.

This anthology highlights the theoretical foundations as well as the various applications of Behavioural Law and Economics in European legal culture. By the same token, it fosters the dialogue between European and American Law and Economics scholars. The traditional neo-classical microeconomic theory explains human behaviour by using Rational Choice. According to this model, people tend to maximize the difference between expected utility and cost ("expected utility theory"). This theory includes three assumptions: (1) unbounded rationality, (2) unbounded self-interest, and (3) unbounded (...) willpower. Behavioural Economics questions these assumptions and endeavours to render economic analysis more realistic by underpinning it with psychological insights. In recent years, the influence of Behavioural Economics on the Economic Analysis of Law has gained momentum. Behavioural Law and Economics generates a better theoretical understanding of legal phenomena and offers a multitude of applications in legislation and legal adjudication. This volume is testament to the growing and thriving Law and Economics movement in Europe. The European Law and Economics community has steadily grown and the yearly Law and Economics Conference at the law faculty of the University of Lucerne has successfully become a guiding star in the vast sky of Law and Economics. (shrink)

Fifty years after the famous essay “The Problem of Social Cost” (1960) by the Nobel laureate Ronald Coase, Law and Economics seems to have become the lingua franca of American jurisprudence, and although its influence on European jurisprudence is only moderate by comparison, it has also gained popularity in Europe. A highly influential publication of a different nature was the Brundtland Report (1987), which extended the concept of sustainability from forestry to the whole of the economy and society. According to (...) this report, development is sustainable when it “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. A key requirement of sustainable development is justice to future generations. It is still a matter of fact that the law as well as the theories of justice are generally restricted to the resolution of conflicts between contemporaries and between people living in the same country. This in turn raises a number of questions: what is the philosophical justification for intergenerational justice? What bearing does sustainability have on the efficiency principle? How do we put a policy of sustainability into practice, and what is the role of the law in doing so? The present volume is devoted to these questions. In Part One, “Law and Economics”, the role of economic analysis and efficiency in law is examined more closely. Part Two, “Law and Sustainability”, engages with the themes of sustainable development and justice to future generations. Finally, Part Three, “Law, Economics and Sustainability”, addresses the interrelationships between the different aspects. (shrink)

How do participating in a work of fiction and imagining a fictional world intertwine with the reader’s life? I develop an account that explores the relation between fiction reading and the reader’s narrative identity. Starting with an investigation of Paul Ricoeur’s account of narrative identity and of Kendall Walton’s account of the nature of representations, I develop my own model of fiction reading. My account is based on two starting assumptions: first, that human beings are entangled in stories, and second, (...) that emotions are complex and have a narrative structure. I argue that during the reading process, the fiction reader creates her own narratives which contain not only the story provided by the work of fiction, but also event sequences from their own experiential memories. I investigate the creation and the influence of self-conscious emotions which are generated during the reading process, especially when a reader identifies with a fictional character from within. I consider how and why these fiction-induced emotions can continue after the reading is finished, and how these emotions can motivate the reader to engage in self-reflection and to refigure her self-narrative. My account examines a new topic: the interactive influence of fiction reading and the fiction reader’s narrative identity. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom situates the historical origins of social movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by attributing their emergence to the rise of democracy, capitalism, and the nation-state. In this article, I challenge this scholarly orthodoxy by presenting primary sources and historical scholarship that demonstrate how the German Peasants’ Revolt of 1524 and 1525 meets Charles Tilly’s criteria for a modern social movement. By challenging the standard narrative of social movements as a product of modernity, this article breaks with the (...) dichotomy between modern and premodern social movements and encourages us to rethink the concept of social movements. (shrink)

Two lecture styles were examined to determine which was more effective for enhancing content learning in college students. The same experienced guest lecturer presented information about bipolar disorder (a combination of depression and mania) to college students in human service-related fields. Students in classes assigned to the control group received a standard, didactic lecture. In classes assigned to the experimental group, the presenter began the lecture by informing the students that she had bipolar disorder and enhanced the standard didactic lecture (...) by interspersing descriptions of her personal experiences living with bipolar disorder. Content-specific pre-tests and post-tests developed by the researchers were used to compare acquisition of knowledge about the disorder across groups of students. Results showed that students who received the personal/experiential lecture acquired significantly more knowledge about bipolar disorder than did students who received the standard, didactic lecture. Theories and procedures that may enhance student learning and thinking in related areas are discussed. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck characterized the transition from modern to late modern society as a shift from an industrial to a “risk society.” Contemporary society is challenged by negative side effects of modernization, including the increasing and imminent threat of global climate change. This article will test the validity of conceivable prescriptive elements associated with this sociological theory. In doing so, it will focus on the most recent legal developments aimed at tackling climate change within the EU. This paper finds that the (...) precautionary approach is unable to sufficiently shape balanced legal intervention in this day and age. However, the approach adopted by the EU appears to be more successful in this respect. (shrink)

Mental representations have continuous as well as discrete, combinatorial properties. For example, while predominantly discrete, phonological representations also vary continuously; this is reflected by gradient effects in instrumental studies of speech production. Can an integrated theoretical framework address both aspects of structure? The framework we introduce here, Gradient Symbol Processing, characterizes the emergence of grammatical macrostructure from the Parallel Distributed Processing microstructure (McClelland, Rumelhart, & The PDP Research Group, 1986) of language processing. The mental representations that emerge, Distributed Symbol Systems, (...) have both combinatorial and gradient structure. They are processed through Subsymbolic Optimization–Quantization, in which an optimization process favoring representations that satisfy well-formedness constraints operates in parallel with a distributed quantization process favoring discrete symbolic structures. We apply a particular instantiation of this framework, λ-Diffusion Theory, to phonological production. Simulations of the resulting model suggest that Gradient Symbol Processing offers a way to unify accounts of grammatical competence with both discrete and continuous patterns in language performance. (shrink)

The topic of this dissertation is the concept of nature and how Kant and Hegel each conceive of it. Both agree that <nature> cannot be an empirical concept but is rather presupposed in all experience and object-related thinking. Yet, Kant holds that we can only conceive of nature as a unified whole when we conceive of it as a mechanical system. Whereas, according to Hegel, the unity of all the different kinds of natural phenomena can only be accounted for by (...) means of his dialectical method. A crucial and novel point in my reading of Kant is that the concept of nature as a mechanical system is merely a regulative ideal, i.e., an imaginary end-point of science that we only approach asymptotically. It is this point that allows me to resolve long-standing puzzles in the scholarship regarding organisms and free will. For this point allows for a coherent reading of Kant, a reading that involves that 1) we do in fact have experience of organisms as purposive and that 2) Kant’s distinctive kind of determinism is compatible with an open future. My reading of Kant furthermore provides a uniquely suited entry-point into Hegel’s dialectical account of nature, according to which not only human beings and organisms, but even solar systems do not fit the mould of a flat-footed mechanical determinism. This allows me to show that Hegel is—in several respects—both an inheritor and radicalizer of Kant. (shrink)

Theories that explain the behavior of the economy during the Depression are based on assumptions about agents’ expectations about future price trends. This paper uses an alternative methodological approach which utilizes real-time information from the Depression period to infer whether deflation was anticipated. The information includes the forecasting methodology of that time as well as projections about anticipated output that were obtained from the textual analysis of business statements, converting qualitative to quantitative data. We infer that deflation was not anticipated (...) because agents did not expect economic output to consistently decrease. (shrink)