In this paper it is argued that Grotius views on customary law are compatible with the concept of a ‘Grotian Moment’. However, the idea of accelerated customary international law is developed by Van Vollenhoven, who interpreted Grotius in a questionable way. Whereas Grotius qualifies as a thinker in the tradition of natural law, Van Vollenhoven should be seen as an interactionist. This is especially visible in his publications on adat law, in which he visibly belongs to a romantic, Germanist, and (...) rather pluralist tradition of law. The idea of a Grotian Moment also fits better with this starting point than with natural law. For this reason, the ‘Grotian Moment’ should be renamed ‘Van Vollenhoven’s Moment’. It is argued that this legal theoretical position explains some of Van Vollenhoven’s rather peculiar interpretations of Grotius. (shrink)

After the French Revolution, the codification movement led to the introduction of the Dutch Civil Code and the Commercial Code of 1838. These codifications were generally regarded as the bedrock of a dogmatic system in which little space was left for customs and customary law. Mercantile jurists, such as Holtius and Levy, were opponents of the legalistic approach of the new codifications. They tried to separate mercantile law from civil law in order to protect mercantile law from excessive legalistic influences. (...) According to them, mercantile law was characterised by internationality, custom as its main source of law, continuity through an extended mercantile legal history and by good faith and mutual trust between the merchants. Out of these, the historicity and homogeneity of a strong community of merchants are particularly in line with a traditional and conservative view on society. Holtius and Levy, however, had little in common with their Christian-conservative contemporaries. On the one hand, they rather seemed to foreshadow the kind of liberal-conservatism as expressed by Hayek during the 20th century. On the other hand, their ideas have much in common with different lex mercatoria –traditions developed by authors as Goldman and Schmitthoff. On the aspects of historicity and internationality Holtius and Levy seem to have much in common with Hayek whereas concerning communality and the legal nature of customary law there are more similarities with the lex mercatoria-traditions. (shrink)

Het verhaal van de natuurkunde is ook een persoonlijk verhaal, want achter de feiten gaan altijd mensen schuil. Van Einstein, die Beethoven op zijn viool probeert te spelen, tot Van Swinden, die jarenlang in het planetarium in Franeker werkt. Cees Andriesse, die 'Titan kan niet slapen' schreef, een biografie over Christiaan Huygens, heeft veel gevoel voor deze verhalen. In deze nieuwe geschiedenis van de natuurkunde wordt dan ook ruim aandacht besteed aan de zoektocht en wederwaardigheden van grote figuren, maar ook (...) van collega's uit de tijd dat Andriesse in Groningen werkte. De wetenschap draait om onmiskenbare relaties tussen harde feiten; die gaan spreken onder de pen van Andriesse, die oog heeft voor de ontdekkers en zichtbaar maakt hoe zijn eigen begrip is ontstaan. Het is hem niet te doen om de mechanisering van de natuurkunde, maar om de historisering daarvan. Dit boek biedt een nieuw perspectief op grote ontdekkingen, waarbij zowel God, als literatuur als psychologie een rol spelen. (shrink)

This book employs contemporary philosophy, scientific research, and clinical reports to argue that pain, though real, is not an appropriate object of scientific generalisations or an appropriate target for medical intervention. Each pain experience is instead complex and idiosyncratic in a way which undermines scientific utility. In addition to contributing novel arguments and developing a novel position on the nature of pain, the book provides an interdisciplinary overview of dominant models of pain. The author lays the needed groundwork for improved (...) models and targeted treatments at a time when pain science, pain medicine, and philosophy are explicitly searching for both and failing to find them. The Complex Reality of Pain will be of interest to a broad range of researchers and students, including those working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, cognitive science, neuroscience, medicine, health, cognitive and behavioural psychology, and pain science. (shrink)

As the use of algorithmic decision‐making becomes more commonplace, so too does the worry that these algorithms are often inscrutable and our use of them is a threat to our agency. Since we do not understand why an inscrutable process recommends one option over another, we lose our ability to judge whether the guidance is appropriate and are vulnerable to being led astray. In response, I claim that a process being inscrutable does not automatically make its guidance inappropriate. This phenomenon (...) is not restricted to algorithms, and there are many social processes which we should conform to but are similarly unable to judge for ourselves. I provide a framework for how we can depend on inscrutable processes by introducing a distinction between knowing conformity (where I understand what justifies the guidance) from mere conformity (where I merely do what I am told) and showing how mere conformity is often positively valuable because it allows for extended processes that in turn allow us to accomplish more than we could on our own. This is in effect a division of deliberative labour, which I argue is something commonplace but not often recognised, of which algorithmic guidance can be an example. (shrink)

Despite its current popularity, “emergence” is a concept with a venerable history and an elusive, ambiguous standing in contemporary evolutionary theory. This paper briefly recounts the history of the term and details some of its current usages. Not only are there radically varying interpretations about how to define emergence but “reductionist” and “holistic” theorists hold very different views about the issue of causation. However, these two seemingly polar positions are not irreconcilable. Reductionism, or detailed analysis of the parts and their (...) interactions, is essential for answering the “how” question in evolution—how does a complex living system work? But holism is equally necessary for answering the “why” question—why did a particular arrangement of parts evolve? In order to answer the “why” question, a broader, multi-leveled paradigm is required. The reductionist approach to explaining emergent complexity has entailed a search for underlying “laws of emergence.” In contrast, the “Synergism Hypothesis” focuses on the “economics”—the functional effects produced by emergent wholes and their selective consequences in evolutionary change. This paper also argues that emergent phenomena represent, in effect, a subset of a larger universe of cooperative, synergistic effects in the natural world. (shrink)

The negativity bias is a broad psychological principle according to which the negative is more causally efficacious than the positive. Bad, as it is often put, is stronger than good. The principle is widely accepted and often serves as a constraint in affective science. If true, it has significant implications for everyday life and philosophical inquiry. In this article, I submit the negativity bias to its first dose of philosophical scrutiny and argue that it should be rejected. I conclude by (...) offering some alternative hedonic hypotheses that survive the offered arguments and may prove fruitful. (shrink)

We argue that an understanding of livestock farming as normative practice clarifies how sustainability is to be understood in livestock farming. The sustainability of livestock farming is first approached by investigating its identity. We argue that the economic aspect qualifies and the formative aspect founds the livestock farming practice. Observing the normativity related to these aspects will be the first task for the livestock farmer. In addition, we can distinguish conditioning norms applicable to the livestock farming practice which should be (...) observed for competent performance of the practice. Failing to do justice to this normativity might affect the practice’s sustainability only in the long term—this is especially the case with conditioning norms. Motives to observe normativity have, therefore, the character of an ultimate conviction regarding the flourishing of the practice. Finally, the sustainability of the livestock farming practice crucially depends on the broader food system of which it is part. (shrink)

Though pain scientists now understand pain to be a complex experience typically composed of sensation, emotion, cognition, and motivational responses, many philosophers maintain that pain is adequately characterized by one privileged aspect of this complexity. Philosophically dominant unitary accounts of pain as a sensation or perception are here evaluated by their ability to explain actual cases—and found wanting. Further, it is argued that no forthcoming unitary characterization of pain is likely to succeed. Instead, I contend that both the motivating intuitions (...) behind unitary accounts and the wide range of pain phenomena are best accommodated by a componential view of pain that does not privilege any single component as necessary or sufficient. (shrink)

Nietzsche's ethics is basically an ethics of virtue. In his own unique way, and in accordance with his extra-moral view of life, Nietzsche recovers and re-appropriates certain virtues – notably pagan, aristocratic virtues – as part of his project to reconceptualise (‘rehabilitate') the virtues in terms of virtù (virtuosity and vitality), to which he also refers as his ‘moraline-free' conception of the virtues. The virtue of generosity (in the sense of magnanimity) plays a central role in Nietzschean ethics. According to (...) Nietzsche, the truly noble or virtuous person is one who lives beyond resentment and feelings of remorse and guilt. He lives his life from the fullness and plenitude of his own being and what he is able to bestow on others. Nietzsche seeks to rekindle and rehabilitate the aristocratic ‘pathos of distance' as the true origin of ethical life. This pathos of distance basically emanates from self-respect: ‘The noble soul has reverence for itself' (1974b: §287). For Nietzsche, this means that one should realize the greatest multiplicity of drives and form-giving forces in oneself, in the most tension-fraught but ‘controlled' manner. This control, this imposing a form on oneself without neglecting the multiplicity in oneself, is a creative, artistic activity. Nietzsche also refers to this as a process of transforming the self into a work of art, of giving style to one's own existence. Thus we free ourselves from guilt, resentment and the rage against contingency. It is of the utmost importance for Nietzsche that one should attain satisfaction with oneself, for ‘only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is continually ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.' (1974a: §290). To attain satisfaction with oneself ultimately means to affirm life in its totality. This implies a life beyond resentment, i.e. a life that is characterised by generosity or magnanimity ( megalopsychia, magnanimitas ), which is for Nietzsche the ‘crown' of all the virtues. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 26 (1) 2007: pp. 17-30. (shrink)

Promiscuous realism is the thesis that there are many equally legitimate ways of classifying the world’s entities. Advocates of promiscuous realism are typically taken to hold the further the- sis, often undistinguished, that kind terms usefully deployed in scientific generalisations are no more natural than those deployed for any other purposes. Call this further thesis promiscuous nat- uralism. I here defend a version of promiscuous realism which denies promiscuous naturalism. To do so, I introduce the notion of a promiscuous kind: (...) a kind that is maximally usefully referenced in predictive and explanatory generalisations, none of which are scientific generalisations. I first defend the claim that pain is a promiscuous kind before extending these considerations to everyday mental kinds more generally. I draw on further reflections from both everyday life and contem- porary psychology to make credible the novel suggestion that our everyday theory of our minds is for the explanation and prediction of individuals. Combined with the complex idiosyncrasy of individual minds, this suggested aim of everyday theory gives us reason to think that promiscuity is prevalent among everyday mental kinds. (shrink)

This book discusses the Aristotelian setting of Thomas Hobbes' main work on natural philosophy, "De Corpore (1655).

There have been many different ways of characterizing and describing the phenomenon of life over the years. One aspect that has not often been stressed is lifersquo;s emergent propertiesmdash;the synergies that are produced when many elements or parts combine to produce distinctive new ldquo;wholesrdquo;. Indeed, complex living systems represent a multi-leveled, multi-faceted hierarchy of synergistic effects that has evolved over several billion years. Some of the many examples of synergy at various levels of life are briefly described, and it is (...) emphasized that life is still creating itself and still exploring its potentialities. (shrink)

Nigeria is indeed a typical pluralistic society with innumerable differences in culture, ethnicity, tribe, religion, and class. Yet there exists in Nigeria certain dominant cultures, ethnic nationalities, religions, and classes. In some parts of the country the influence of a dominant culture or ethnic group is more pronounced than in others. This paper is therefore an attempt to look into our pluralism and see how it can enhance the development and promotion of democracy in the country. This paper will address (...) this topic by considering a working definition of democracy and how it is understood and applied in Nigeria; the ethnoreligious politics in Nigeria; postmodernism, democracy, and pluralism in Nigerian society; and the role of religious leaders in the survival of democracy in Nigeria. (shrink)

Max Weber's concept of the iron cage has become a byword in the scholarly world since the publication in 1930 of Talcott Parsons' translation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism . What is less well-known is that Jules Verne had earlier used the iron cage metaphor in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) to reveal the paradoxes of modernity. Roland Barthes criticized Verne's vision of modernity as bourgeois and positivistic, pointing out his narrow-minded enthusiasm for futuristic (...) technology. In this essay, I argue that Verne's originality lies precisely in his equivocal attitude towards modernity with its high technology. Verne, I suggest, does not reject technological modernity, but by dissecting it he reveals its propelling forces, high demands and price. He shows that the Enlightenment's Rule of Reason is, in the end, governed by the ancient passions of fear, bitterness and the thirst for revenge. It is this combination that makes the human condition tragic. Verne's Homeric imagination creates an epic hero—Captain Nemo—who personifies the remarkable alliance of modern science and ancient heroism. (shrink)

This article provides an application of Alvin Gouldner's dialectic between Romanticism and Classicism to the constitutional process of European identity formation. Gouldner introduced his dialectical sociology in a critical attempt to destroy compulsive identification with any fixed idea of order. In an attempt to destroy compulsive identification with any Romantic or classical idea of Europe, this article shows how Europe's identity, as it has been represented in the Constitutional Treaty (CT), as well as in sociological works, is being shaped by (...) predominant Romantic and classic thought structures and social movements. The central argument is that the dialectic between Romanticism and Classicism in Europe is most clearly observed in the debates about democracy, human rights and rule of law — the classical values that constitute the EU's entry criteria. (shrink)

This article takes it cue from John Dewey and his views on the interrelationship between democracy and education. The basic premise is that education and democracy are inextricably linked and that in a free society the link is severed only at our peril. Education must be both public and democratic if we wish to preserve our democracy's public spaces. We should resist calls for ‘excellence’ if this means educating only ‘the best’ and excluding those most likely to fail. On the (...) other hand, we should likewise resist the tendency to jettison excellence (or just plain competence) in the name of educational equality. (shrink)

In recent years, evolutionary theorists have come to recognize that the reductionist, individualist, gene-centered approach to evolution cannot sufficiently account for the emergence of complex biological systems over time. Peter A. Corning has been at the forefront of a new generation of complexity theorists who have been working to reshape the foundations of evolutionary theory. Well known for his Synergism Hypothesis—a theory of complexity in evolution that assigns a key causal role to various forms of functional synergy—Corning puts this theory (...) into a much broader framework in _Holistic Darwinism_, addressing many of the issues and concepts associated with the evolution of complex systems. Corning's paradigm embraces and integrates many related theoretical developments of recent years, from multilevel selection theory to niche construction theory, gene-culture coevolution theory, and theories of self-organization. Offering new approaches to thermodynamics, information theory, and economic analysis, Corning suggests how all of these domains can be brought firmly within what he characterizes as a post–neo-Darwinian evolutionary synthesis. (shrink)

In The Doctrine of God Dolf te Velde examines the interaction of method and content in three historically important accounts of the doctrine of God.

Er is de laatste decennia nogal wat te doen over de metafoor en haar functie. En vaak wordt daarbij verwezen naar een belangrijke tekst van de Griekse filosoof Aristoteles. Ik wil in het hierna volgende nagaan wat Aristoteles over de metafoor zegt. Ik begin met de hierboven bedoelde passage in haar verband zo letterlijk mogelijk te vertalen. Dan bezie ik verder wat Aristoteles met de metafoor die hij als voorbeeld gebruikt, doet en vervolgens bezien we wat Aristoteles verder over de (...) ‘overdracht’ zegt, en wat enkele geleerden zeggen over Aristoteles-en-de-metafoor. Tenslotte stel ik de vraag of, afgezien van Aristoteles, er reden is om te denken dat de metafoor een ‘cognitief extra’ heeft boven een mededeling in normale bewoordingen, en speciaal de wat soms genoemd wordt ‘levende’ metafoor. Ik zelf kan daar niet van overtuigd raken. (shrink)

Recent Work on Pain, Analysis, doi:_ 10.1093/analys/any055 _.

People can learn to perform new tasks very quickly by making use of lower‐level skills they have developed when learning previous tasks. Hoekstra, Martens, and Taatgen model this process, showing how a system trained on simple tasks (visual search and two working memory tasks) can then quickly learn to perform the attentional blink task, and it ends up making the same sorts of errors as people do.

Calling Citizens to a Moral Way of Life: A Dutch Example of Moralized Politics This article offers a sociological analysis of the moral revisions that accompany welfare state reforms in the Netherlands. It is argued that Dutch welfare state reforms after the Cold War rely on moral discourses in particular and moral language in general to legitimize and effectuate policy measures. The Dutch reformers have been pursuing a set of strategies of moralization designed to adjust the Dutch welfare state to (...) the new, post-Cold War situation, in which social policies are redesigned to support the operation of global markets. This article seeks to show how this "moral revision" has been taking place by consulting data sources provided by Dutch media, policy documents, council reports, advices, speeches, and newspaper interviews. This implies that special attention is paid to the rhetoric, language, tones, symbolism, metaphors and moral images used and propagated by moral revisionists, elites and media, their definitions of the prevailing moral situation and of the desired one, their formulation of desired values and norms and the ways in which moral panics are aroused. Three recent Dutch policy innovations, namely the national debate on norms and values, the Charter Responsible Citizenship and the family policy memorandum, are interpreted as political strategies to re-engineer the new morality that can sustain a reformed state. (shrink)

Obwohl sie durch das Werk von MoNTESQUIEU erst auf die praktische Staatskunst von Einfluss geworden ist, so ist doch die Lehre der drei Staatsfunktionen schon von sehr altem Datum. Die Spuren einer Einteilung der Staatsaufgabe kann man bereits 1 bei ARISTOTELES finden. Er unterscheidet in der Politica ) drei Elemente. Das Verhältnis dieser die Staatsaufgabe konstituierenden Elemente ist verschieden und charakteristisch für den Regierungs typus, und ARISTOTELES hält es für die Pflicht des Gesetzgebers, eines und das andre so anzuordnen, wie (...) es sich für jede Gemein schaft passt. Man kann dann nach ARISTOTELES unterscheiden, erstens die beratende Funktion, welche die autoritative Beschluss fassung über Krieg und Frieden, das Schliessen oder Brechen von Bündnissen, die Verfassung von Gesetzen, das Treffen von Ent scheidungen über 'Todesstrafe, Verbannung und Konfiskation, sowie die Anstellung von Magistraten umfasst. Daneben nennt ARISTOTELES die vollziehende Funktion der Obrigkeit und die richterliche Funktion. 2 JEAN BoDIN ) kommt bei der Analysierung der Souveränität zu fünf Elementen, nämlich Gesetzgebung, Entscheidung über Krieg und Frieden, Ernennung von Beamten, Rechtsprechung und Begnadigung. (shrink)

Nietzsche's philosophy of life-affirmation and perspectivism is often charged with skeptical relativism and a seemingly unsurmountable problem of self-referentiality that necessarily leads to a “performative contradiction” (Habermas). While the charge of skeptical relativism can be easily dismissed, the problem of self-reference is a much more complicated affair. After discussing certain aspects of Nietzsche's perspectivism, and particularly those texts in which he explicitly deals with the issue of self-referentiality, I come to the conclusion that Nietzsche's various judgements and his perspectivism can (...) be sustained without succumbing to the charge of self-referential inconsistency. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.22(4) 2003: 348-360. (shrink)

(2006). Performativity and self-revelation as key concepts in Hannah Arendt's ethic of virtue. South African Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 189-205.

The historiography of European liberalism has been dominated by large countries; this contribution focuses on the successful tradition of liberalism in the Netherlands. Just like German liberalism (but unlike the British 19th-century model), the spirit of Dutch 19th-century liberalism was constitutional (in the sense of being legal and juridical). It assumed that constitutional rules in a certain sense produced liberty, because liberty was not possible without a legally guaranteed context. Today the Dutch liberal party tries to combine classical liberalism with (...) a mild populism, but recently the Pim Fortuyn upsurge of populism has hurt the liberal party. A direct democratic style of politics has become popular among more right-wing liberals. Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the 19th-century doctrinaire liberal traditions. Their anti-democratic ideas have been superseded, but the constitutional organization of liberty is as important as ever. (shrink)

This article examines how Reformed scholasticism can be relevant for systematic theology today. ‘Reformed Scholasticism’ denotes the academic practice in which the doctrines of the Reformation are expounded, explained, and defended. It is primarily a method and attitude in search of the truth, based on a careful reading of Scripture, drawing on patristic and medieval traditions, and interacting with philosophy and other academic disciplines. In addition to these methodological features, important contributions on various doctrinal topics can be discovered. The doctrine (...) of God has a foundational role in the sense that God is the primary subject of the other topics. Reformed scholastic theology not only examines God’s inner essence, but also the concrete relation and operation of God toward his world. In a Trinitarian understanding of God’s essence, a distinction is maintained between God’s immanent relatedness as three divine Persons, and his outward relation to created reality. The doctrines of creation and providence gave occasion for Reformed scholastics to engage in debates with the emerging natural sciences, and also articulated important theological insights concerning the involvement of God in creaturely affairs. In Christology, the Reformed orthodox maintained the classic doctrine of the two natures of Jesus Christ, against Socinians and other opponents. These ontological statements are the necessary conditions for a proper understanding of the salvation by Christ. While the doctrinal positions of Reformed scholastic theology cannot be automatically transmitted to contemporary discussions, we can profit from this tradition on several levels of method and content. (shrink)

Metaphysics in discussion : the medieval context -- The degrees of abstraction and the metaphysical Separatio -- From physics to metaphysics : the way of Resolutio -- The transcendental focus of metaphysics -- The place of analogy in metaphysics -- From experience to transcendence -- The double challenge to metaphysics in the present-day world.