This paper is divided into two main thematic blocks. First, it expounds the doctrine of the potencies of Schelling, trying to show how this doctrine is based on a Potenzloses. Secondly, I examine the influence of this Potenzlose to Heidegger’s Geviert.

In diesem Band werden Beiträge gesammelt, die sich nicht nur auf rein formal logische Aspekte, sondern auch auf Probleme beziehen, die mit der Erkenntnistheorie, der Naturphilosophie und der Dialektik in Verbindung stehen. Iván de los Ríos Gutiérrez stellt die Aristotelische Kontingenzlehre dar. Miguel García-Valdecasas erörtert die wissenschaftstheoretischen Fundamente der Aristotelischen Nous-Lehre. Joseph Li Vecchi entwickelt ein formales Modell für Inferenzen, die auf der Grundlage von analogischen Verhältnissen basieren. Niels Öffenberger charakterisiert die abgeleiteten Wahrheitswerte, die sich durch die Dichotomie der schlichten (...) Wahrheit und der schlichten Falschheit ergeben. Paloma Pérez-Ilzarbe und María Cerezo verteidigen durch eine Interpretation der Struktur der Assertion die Gültigkeit des Bivalenz prinzips im Rahmen der Aristotelischen Wahrheitstheorie. Gabriela Rossi präsentiert eine systematische Darstellung der Rolle der lysis als Instrument der Aristotelischen Dialektik. Mirko Skarica untersucht die zeitgenössische Rezeption der Aristotelischen Auffassung des einfachen prädikativen Satzes bei Vertretern sowohl der analytischen als auch der phänomenologischen Tradition. Alejandro G. Vigo charakterisiert das Aristotelische Modell der Kausalerklärung in der Naturphilosophie in Verbindung mit dem Begriff eines sog. Hintergrundsholismus. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 3 Seiten: 349-352.

Resumen: Este artículo presenta una revisión detallada de la deconstrucción de la subjetividad estética moderna ensayada por Jacques Derrida en su confrontación con la célebre e influyente Kritik der Urteilskraft de Kant y, a la vez, sitúa esta empresa en el contexto mayor del corpus derridiano por medio de la explicitación de la vasta red conceptual que la sostiene. En último término, lo que aquí se explora -siguiendo siempre a Derrida- es una comprensión de la experiencia estética como sustracción, como (...) fractura del campo subjetivo por efecto de la introducción de una presencia irreductible.: This article presents a detailed account of the aesthetic subject’s deconstruction as developed by Jacques Derrida in his confrontation with Kant’s famous and influential Critique of judgment. At the same time, it places this enterprise in the context of Derrida’s corpus by making explicit the vast conceptual network that lies behind it. In the last analysis, what is here explored - following Derrida’s lead - is an understanding of aesthetical experience as subtraction, as a breach into the subjective field through the introduction of an irreducible non-presence. (shrink)

Against the common historiographic narratives of evolutionary biology, the first decades of the 20th century were theoretically far richer than usually assumed. This especially refers to the hitherto neglected role that early theoretical biologists played in introducing visionary research perspectives and concepts before the institutionalization of the Modern Synthesis. Here, we present one of these scholars, the German theoretical biologist and ecomorphologist Hans Böker, by reviewing his 1935 paper “Artumwandlung durch Umkonstruktion, Umkonstruktion durch aktives Reagieren der Organismen”, published in the (...) inaugural volume of the journal Acta Biotheoretica. While largely forgotten today, this work represents a melting pot of ideas that adumbrate some of today’s most lively debated empirical and conceptual topics in evolutionary biology: the active role of organisms as actors of their own evolution, environmental induction and phenotypic plasticity, genetic assimilation, as well as developmental bias. We discuss Böker’s views on how species change through "Umkonstruktion," and how such reconstruction is exerted through active reactions of organisms to environmental perturbations. In addition, we outline the aims and wider context of his "biological comparative anatomy," including Boker’s reprehensible political affiliation with the Nazi Party. Finally, we highlight some of the historical reasons for why Böker’s views did not have a larger impact in evolutionary biology, but we also recount some of the direct and indirect legacies of his approach in research areas such as ecomorphology and EvoDevo. Böker’s paper is available as supplementary material in the online version of this article, as part of the journal's "Classics in Biological Theory" collection; the first translation of the paper into English, by Alexander Böhm and Jan Baedke, is also being published in this volume. (shrink)

In this article we investigate the astonishing variety of emotions evoked by filmic melodramas. Closely analyzing a deeply moving scene from Alejandro Gonzáles Grams, we criticize the limited view of the emotional effects of this genre. We show that melodramas elicit more than just sadness or pity; they cannot be reduced to their tear-jerking potential. Melodramas move their viewers precisely because they send them on a rollercoaster ride with ups and downs of very different emotions.

Die in diesem Band versammelten Essays erörtern die Frage nach der Möglichkeit des Verstehens menschlichen Handelns ohne den Rückbezug auf moralische Werte und Normen. Obwohl die Autoren sich dieser Frage auf ganz unterschiedliche, manchmal divergierende, Weisen nähern, verbindet sie alle die Annahme, es sei nicht wünschenswert oder sogar inkohärent, das menschliche Handeln grundsätzlich unabhängig von moralischen Werten zu betrachten. Die Herausgeber haben sich um eine für Philosophen und Gesellschaftswissenschaftler gleichermaßen attraktive Beitragssammlung bemüht. Die Verknüpfung philosophischer und soziologischer Perspektiven könnte zur (...) Klärung gegenseitiger Missverständnisse beitragen, die aufgrund eines mangelhaften Dialogs zwischen der philosophischen und soziologischen Handlungstheorie erwachsen sind. In diesem Band enthalten sind Essays von Terry Pinkard, Sebastian Rödl, Dieter Schönecker, Ana Marta González, John Levi Martin, Alejandro N. García Martínez, Sophie Djigo, Teresa Enríquez und Evgenia Mylonaki. The essays in this volume address the question of whether we can understand human action without reference to moral norms or values. Although the authors approach this question in different and sometimes even incompatible ways, they are united in thinking that it is undesirable or even incoherent to treat human agency as if it were conceptually independent of value questions. The editors have attempted to invite contributions that would be interesting to both philosophers and social theorists. The conjunction of philosophic and sociological perspectives might help to overcome some of the mutual misunderstandings that have been fostered by a lack of dialogue between the philosophic and sociological action theory. The volume includes essays by Terry Pinkard, Sebastian Rödl, Dieter Schönecker, Ana Marta González, John Levi Martin, Alejandro N. García Martínez, Sophie Djigo, Teresa Enríquez, and Evgenia Mylonaki. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:94. THE HUME LITERATURE FOR 1976 A fairly complete coverage of the recent Hume literature up to 1970 is available in my booklet, A Hume Bibliography from 1930 (York, 1971; obtainable direct from the author, post free, on payment of jé 1.25 within the U.K., c^3.00 or $8.00 elsewhere). Coverage up to 1975 is obtained when this is combined with the addenda and supplement published in the Philosophical Quarterly (...) in January 1976. What follows here will bring the record up to the end of 1976. Readers are invited to inform me of any omissions. The intention is to maintain a complete bibliographical record of critical work on Hume, by the regular publication in Hume Studies of an annual bibliography covering the previous year. In a forthcoming book (Edinburgh University Press; probable title, Fifty Years of Hume Scholarship) I have tried to provide all that the student of Hume needs as a guide to the secondary literature: an introductory essay on the development of Hume scholarship up to the present time, thorough coverage of the Hume literature from 1925 to 19 76, with indexing by author, language, and subject, and also a list of the main writings on Hume earlier this century. The following abbreviations of journal titles have been used: APQ American Philosophical Quarterly JHI Journal of the History of Ideas JHP Journal of the History of Philosophy JP Journal of Philosophy PAS Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society PB Philosophical Books PBA Proceedings of the British Academy PQ Philosophical Quarterly PR Philosophical Review RIP Revue Internationale de Philosophie 95. RM Review of Metaphysics TLS Times Literary Supplement Other abbreviations should be obvious. ALEJANDRO, de, J. M. 'El atomismo gnoseologico de David Hume (1711-1776)', Pensamiento 32, 383-403. ANDERSON, R. F. 'The Location, Extension, Shape, and Size of Hume's Perceptions', in Livingston & King (see below), 153-71. ARDAL, P. S. 'Some Implications of the Virtue of Reasonableness in Hume's Treatise', in Livingston & King, 91-106. ARDLEY, G. 'Hume's Common Sense Critics', RIP 30, 104-2 5. ATKINSON, R. F. 'Hume on the Standard of Morals', in Merrill & Shahan (see below), 25-44. BAGOLINI, L. David Hume e Adam Smith: Elementi per una ricerca di filosofia giuridica e politica. Bologna. BAYLES, M. D. 'Hume on Blame and Excuse', Hume Studies 2, 17-35. BEANBLOSSOM, R. E. 1A New Foundation for Humean Scepticism1, Phil. Studies 29, 207-10. BEAUCHAMP, T. L. 'An Analysis of Hume's Essay "On Suicide"', RM 30, 73-95. BERfIAN, D. "David Hume on the 1641 Rebellion in Ireland', Studies: a Quarterly Review 65, 101-102. BIRO, J. I. 'Hume on Self-Identity and Memory", RM 30, 19-38. BJELKE, J. F. 'Wirklichkeitserkenntnis und Wirklichkeitsimagination bei Hume', Archiv für Geschichte der Phil. 58, 23-39. BOATRIGHT, J. R. 'Hume's Account of Moral Sentiment", RIP 30, 79-90. BOSSERT, P. J. "Hume and Husserl on Time and Time-Consciousness ", J. Br. Soc. Phenomenol. 7, 44-52. 96. BURNS, S. "The Humean Female", Dialogue 15, 415-2 4. [425-40.] BUTLER, R. J. ' Distinctiones Rationis, or the Cheshire Cat which left its smile behind it", PAS 76, 165-76. BUTLER, R. J. 'Hume's Impressions', in Royal Inst, of Phil. Lectures, Vol. 9, 122-36. CAPALDI, N. 'Hume's Theory of the Passions', in Livingston & King, 172-90. CHERRY, C. 'Nature, artifice and moral approbation", PAS 76, 265-82. COHEN, R. 'The Rationale of Hume's Literary Inquiries', in Merrill & Shahan, 97-115. COLVER, A. W. David Hume, The Natural History of Religion and PRICE, J. V. David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. Oxford. [PB_ 18 (1977), 49-54. ] COURTENAY, W. J. et al. Ockham, Descartes, and Hume: Self-Knowledge, Substance, and Causality. Madison, Wis. CONNON, R. W. 'Some Hume MS Alterations on a Copy of the Abstract', JHP 14, 353-6. DAVIDSON, D. 'Hume's cognitive theory of pride', JP- 73, 744-57. DAVIE, W. 'Hume's Catalog of Virtue and Vice', in Merrill & Shahan, 45-57. DERATHÉ, R. 'L'obligation politique selon Hume', RIP 30, 91-103. ESPOSITO, J. L. 'Hume and the Transcendental Idealists', Southern J. Phil. 14, 431-42. FALK, W. D. 'Hume on Is and Ought', Canadian J... (shrink)

While recognizing its origins and scope, Alejandro A. Vallega offers a new interpretation of Latin American philosophy by looking at its radical and transformative roots. Placing it in dialogue with Western philosophical traditions, Vallega examines developments in gender studies, race theory, postcolonial theory, and the legacy of cultural dependency in light of the Latin American experience. He explores Latin America’s engagement with contemporary problems in Western philosophy and describes the transformative impact of this encounter on contemporary thought.

Drawing on behavioral economics, nudges (policy interventions based on choice architecture) have the capacity to strategically shape policymaking, subtly guiding individual behavior by adjusting their decision environment. Applied to enhance vaccinations, boost retirement savings, or promote healthy habits, these interventions align with consensus-defined well-being. As governments adopt nudges, scholars have explored their role in fostering virtues. This paper argues that nudges have the potential to efficiently contribute to virtuous development by instilling and sustaining habits, respecting individual choice, and ensuring deliberation. (...) It introduces the concept of virtue nudges, emphasizing the alignment of habits with virtues for targeted behavioral change and the formation of morally virtuous habits. (shrink)

Teacher quality, its effect on students’ outcomes, and the association of these with economic growth, is the core of recent discussions in Latin America given the region’s weak results in international learning assessments. This paper investigates whether there is an effect of philosophy on the outcomes of critical reading for students in B.Ed. programs in Colombia. Relying on exact matching combined with propensity score matching with regression adjustment, we use national data from Colombia to show that students in B.Ed. in (...) philosophy outperformed students in other B.Ed. in critical reading test (0.401–0.124 SD), and, importantly, with higher effects observed for students with lower prior academic achievement (0.44 SD). This suggests that philosophy can help to narrow educational outcomes of students whose socioeconomic conditions are disadvantageous, contributing to social justice in education. (shrink)

Studies with sacrificial moral dilemmas capture human variation in moral attitudes towards an extreme case of moral conflict between utilitarian and deontological principles. In this moral task, th...

Argumentation represents a way of reasoning over a knowledge base containing possibly incomplete and/or inconsistent information, to obtain useful conclusions. As a reasoning mechanism, the way an argumentation reasoning engine reaches these conclusions resembles the cognitive process that humans follow to analyze their beliefs; thus, unlike other computationally reasoning systems, argumentation offers an intellectually friendly alternative to other defeasible reasoning systems. LogicProgrammingisacomputationalparadigmthathasproducedcompu- tationallyattractivesystemswithremarkablesuccessinmanyapplications. Merging ideas from both areas, Defeasible Logic Programming offers a computational reasoning system that uses an argumentation engine (...) to obtain answers from a knowledge base represented using a logic programming language extended with defeasible rules. This combination of ideas brings about a computationally effective system together with a human-like reasoning model facilitating its use in applications. (shrink)

Nudging and sludging are forms of choice architecture that shape behavior. While it is generally believed that nudging should improve well-being and sludging should decrease it, there has been debate about how to distinguish between the two. Some have suggested that the difference lies in the ease with which behaviors are facilitated or hindered, but this criterion does not consider the normative distinction (nudges have a positive connotation and sludges a negative one) or the impact on well-being. This paper proposes (...) a normative approach to defining nudging and sludging that takes into account both well-being and the principle of autonomy. According to our proposal, the concept of nudging should involve interventions that aim to increase well-being while respecting individuals’ freedom of choice, while sludging involves interventions that decrease well-being while also respecting autonomy, whether intentionally or unintentionally. (shrink)

Many think that expressivists have a special problem with negation. I disagree. For if there is a problem with negation, I argue, it is a problem shared by those who accept some plausible claims about the nature of intentionality. Whether there is any special problem for expressivists turns, I will argue, on whether facts about what truth-conditions beliefs have can explain facts about basic inferential relations among those beliefs. And I will suggest that the answer to this last question is, (...) on most plausible attempts at solving the problem of intentionality, ‘no’. (shrink)

Although vaccines are considered an efficient public health tool by medical experts, in different countries, people’s confidence in them has been decreasing. COVID-19 has elevated medical scientists’ and practitioners’ social reputation, and it may have reduced global vaccination hesitancy. Still, this alone will not altogether remove the existent frictions that prevent people from complying with vaccination schedules. This paper will review the common causes behind vaccination hesitancy. It will also explore different types of public policy interventions that health experts in (...) governments and institutions employ to fight vaccine hesitancy and non-compliance. The main objective of this article is to argue that, considering the nature of the issue (vaccine hesitancy and its causes), among the various possibilities, policies based on behavioral insights can provide an effective instrument to remove those frictions. Among them, special attention will be devoted to nudges which promise efficiency while avoiding some of the ethical and political costs of other interventions, thanks to their libertarian paternalistic frame. The article concludes by suggesting that public health policymakers should consider the libertarian paternalistic approach of nudges when deploying interventions that aim at changing people’s attitudes and behavior. (shrink)

Proponents of enactivism should be interested in exploring what notion of action best captures the type of action-perception link that the view proposes, such that it covers all the aspects in which our doings constitute and are constituted by our perceiving. This article proposes and defends the thesis that the notion of sensorimotor dependencies is insufficient to account for the reality of human perception, and that the central enactive notion should be that of perceptual practices. Sensorimotor enactivism is insufficient because (...) it has no traction on socially dependent perceptions, which are essential to the role and significance of perception in our lives. Since the social dimension is a central desideratum in a theory of human perception, enactivism needs a notion that accounts for such an aspect. This article sketches the main features of the Wittgenstein-inspired notion of perceptual practices as the central notion to understand perception. Perception, I claim, is properly understood as woven into a type of social practices that includes food, dance, dress, music, etc. More specifically, perceptual practices are the enactment of culturally structured, normatively rich techniques of commerce of meaningful multi- and inter-modal perceptible material. I argue that perceptual practices explain three central features of socially dependent perception: attentional focus, aspects’ saliency, and modal-specific harmony-like relations. (shrink)

People routinely appeal to ‘beliefs’ in explaining behavior; psychologists do so as well (for instance, in explaining belief polarization and learning). Across three studies (N = 1,843, U.S-based adults), we challenge the assumption that ‘belief’ picks out a single construct in people’s theory of mind. Instead, laypeople attribute different kinds of beliefs depending on whether the beliefs play predominantly epistemic roles (such as truth-tracking) or non-epistemic roles (such as social signaling). We demonstrate that epistemic and non-epistemic beliefs are attributed under (...) different circumstances (Study 1) and support different predictions about the believer’s values (Study 2) and behavior (Study 3). This differentiation emerges reliably across three distinct signatures of attributed belief, and even when the believed content and attributed level of certainty about that content are held constant across cases. Our findings call for a more fine-grained characterization of theory of mind and provide indirect support for the hypothesis that human cognition itself features multiple varieties of belief. (shrink)

On a view implicitly endorsed by many, a concept is epistemically better than another if and because it does a better job at ‘carving at the joints', or if the property corresponding to it is ‘more natural' than the one corresponding to another. This chapter offers an argument against this seemingly plausible thought, starting from three key observations about the way we use and evaluate concepts from en epistemic perspective: that we look for concepts that play a role in explanations (...) of things that cry out for explanation; that we evaluate not only ‘empirical' concepts, but also mathematical and perhaps moral concepts from an epistemic perspective; and that there is much more complexity to the concept/property relation than the natural thought seems to presuppose. These observations, it is argued, rule out giving a theory of conceptual evaluation that is a corollary of a metaphysical ranking of the relevant properties. -/- conceptual ethics, explanation, naturalness, epistemic value, concept/property, semantic internalism. (shrink)

Since the concept of “nudge” was introduced in 2008 by Thaler and Sunstein, proposing that small interventions based on changes in choice architectures can alter people’s behavior and make it easier for them to achieve their desired goals, the application in public policy of behavioral economics has gained significant attention. This has led to the emergence of different types of policies based on behavioral insights, which have been used in a variety of areas, including health or finance, with the goal (...) of promoting well-being and addressing social and economic issues. After providing a basic theoretical background as a frame of reference to understand gender violence, this study explores the use of tools from the field of behavioral economics as it is applied in public policy. Regulatory (paternalistic) and non-regulatory (libertarian) interventions based on behavioral insights will be considered: nudges, boosts, shoves, budges, or sludge audits, are examined as potential interventions to use in matters related to this type of violence. After evaluating these behavioral policy instruments and their potential effectiveness, the limitations of the behavioral perspective are recognized, and the need for a multifaceted approach to combating gender violence is acknowledged. The article concludes by arguing that public policies addressing gender violence should not only utilize behavioral tools but should also incorporate strategies related to education, legislation, and social norms. (shrink)

Alejandro offers a theoretical reflection on citizenship as a political category that could make possible a collective identity defined by the citizens' interpretations of traditions and their participation in the public sphere as well as their construction of a hermeneutic historical consciousness. This reflection seeks to pave the way for a vision of citizenship as a space of fluid boundaries within which there is room for diverse and even conflicting understandings of individuality, community, and public identity. Paper edition (unseen), (...) $17.95. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or. (shrink)

Epistemic Utility Theory is often identified with the project of *axiology-first epistemology*—the project of vindicating norms of epistemic rationality purely in terms of epistemic value. One of the central goals of axiology-first epistemology is to provide a justification of the central norm of Bayesian epistemology, Probabilism. The first part of this paper presents a new challenge to axiology first epistemology: I argue that in order to justify Probabilism in purely axiological terms, proponents of axiology first epistemology need to justify a (...) claim about epistemic value—what I label ‘Downwards Propriety’—much stronger than any they have offered justification. The second part of this paper offers an argument that this challenge cannot be met: that there is no hope for providing a purely axiological justification of Downwards Propriety, at least given widely accepted assumptions about epistemic value. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question of whether uncertainty regarding model structure, especially in climate modeling, exhibits a kind of “chaos.” Do small changes in model structure, in other words, lead to large variations in ensemble predictions? More specifically, does model error destroy forecast skill faster than the ordinary or “classical” chaos inherent in the real-world attractor? In some cases, the answer to this question seems to be “yes.” But how common is this state of affairs? Are there precise mathematical (...) results that can help us answer this question? And is dependence on model structure “sensitive” in that arbitrarily small errors can destroy forecast skill? We examine some efforts in the literature to answer this last question in the affirmative and find them to be unconvincing. (shrink)

This book provides both an introduction to the philosophy of scientific modeling and a contribution to the discussion and clarification of two recent philosophical conceptions of models: artifactualism and fictionalism. These can be viewed as different stances concerning the standard representationalist account of scientific models. By better understanding these two alternative views, readers will gain a deeper insight into what a model is as well as how models function in different sciences. Fictionalism has been a traditional epistemological stance related to (...) antirealist construals of laws and theories, such as instrumentalism and inferentialism. By contrast, the more recent fictional view of models holds that scientific models must be conceived of as the same kind of entities as literary characters and places. This approach is essentially an answer to the ontological question concerning the nature of models, which in principle is not incompatible with a representationalist account of the function of models. The artifactual view of models is an approach according to which scientific models are epistemic artifacts, whose main function is not to represent the phenomena but rather to provide epistemic access to them. It can be conceived of as a non-representationalist and pragmatic account of modeling, which does not intend to focus on the ontology of models but rather on the ways they are built and used for different purposes. The different essays address questions such as the artifactual view of idealization, the use of information theory to elucidate the concepts of abstraction and idealization, the deidealization of models, the nature of scientific fictions, the structural account of representation and the ontological status of structures, the role of surrogative reasoning with models, and the use of models for explaining and predicting physical phenomena. (shrink)

In this essay I revise, based on the notion of the ‘enlightened ruler’ or mingzhu and his critique of the literati of his time, the common belief that Han Fei was an amoralist and an advocate of tyranny. Instead, I will argue that his writings are dedicated to advising those who ought to rule in order to achieve the goal of a peaceful and stable society framed by laws in accordance with the dao.

In Part I of this series [A. Poveda, A. Rinot and D. Sinapova, Sigma-Prikry forcing I: The axioms, Canad. J. Math. 73(5) (2021) 1205–1238], we introduced a class of notions of forcing which we call [Formula: see text]-Prikry, and showed that many of the known Prikry-type notions of forcing that center around singular cardinals of countable cofinality are [Formula: see text]-Prikry. We showed that given a [Formula: see text]-Prikry poset [Formula: see text] and a [Formula: see text]-name for a non-reflecting (...) stationary set [Formula: see text], there exists a corresponding [Formula: see text]-Prikry poset that projects to [Formula: see text] and kills the stationarity of [Formula: see text]. In this paper, we develop a general scheme for iterating [Formula: see text]-Prikry posets and, as an application, we blow up the power of a countable limit of Laver-indestructible supercompact cardinals, and then iteratively kill all non-reflecting stationary subsets of its successor. This yields a model in which the singular cardinal hypothesis fails and simultaneous reflection of finite families of stationary sets holds. (shrink)

This paper critically explores the ethical dimensions of Behavioral Public Policy (BPP), a domain grounded in the understanding that human rationality is bounded and that this limitation often leads to behaviors deemed irrational. By applying the behavioral lens, which posits that people operate under bounded rationality, BPP aims to craft interventions that safeguard individuals against their biases. However, this approach raises significant ethical concerns, both in the scientific underpinnings of BPP and its application through policy interventions. Accordingly, this paper examines (...) two distinct ethical dimensions of BPP, both as a scientific discipline and through its intervention methodologies. The analysis of the first dimension argues that, viewing bounded rationality as only instrumental in decision-making processes, risks oversimplifying ethical complexities. Such simplification may ignore the moral and value-based rationalities underlying decisions, potentially misattributing instances of immorality and akrasia (the failure to act according to one's judgment) to mere deficiencies in rational thinking. Secondly, the paper examines the impact of BPP on moral behavior and character development, addressing ethical concerns like the evidentiary basis of BPP research, the bounded rationality of choice architects themselves, and the morality of behavior changes induced by policy. Overall, this article provides a much-needed examination of the moral considerations associated with behavioral strategies in public policy and its epistemological foundations, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of their ethical implications . (shrink)

Altruism is a central concept in evolutionary biology. Evolutionary biologists still disagree about its meaning (E.O. Wilson 2005; Fletcher et al. 2006; D.S. Wilson 2008; Foster et al. 2006a, b; West et al. 2007a, 2008). Semantic disagreement appears to be quite robust and not easily overcome by attempts at clarification, suggesting that substantive conceptual issues lurk in the background. Briefly, group selection theorists define altruism as any trait that makes altruists losers to selfish traits within groups, and makes groups of (...) altruists fitter than groups of non-altruists. Inclusive fitness theorists reject a definition based on within- and between-group fitness. Traits are altruistic only if they cause a direct and absolute fitness loss to the donor. The latter definition is more restrictive and rejects as cases of altruism behaviors that are accepted by the former. Fletcher and Doebeli (2009) recently proposed a simple, direct and individually based fitness approach, which they claim returns to first principles: carriers of the genotype of interest “must, on average, end up with more net direct fitness benefits than average population members.” This seductively simple proposal uses the concept of assortment to explain how diverse kinds of altruists end up on average with more net fitness than their non-altruistic rivals. In this paper I shall argue that their approach implies a new concept of altruism that contrasts with and improves on the concept of the inclusive fitness approach. (shrink)

Citizenship regimes are institutionalized systems of formal and informal norms that define access to membership, as well as associated rights and duties. This paper studies illegalized migration as one of the major tests to assess whether citizenship regimes are fair institutions, based on a historical analysis of legislation meant to reduce illegalized migration in the United States between 1995 and 2022. We build our empirical research starting from a simple observation: despite the great number of bills introduced to reduce illegalized (...) migration to the US, most of such initiatives fail to become law. In fact, 93.5% of all immigration initiatives did not even pass the chamber of Congress in which they were originally presented. Such a high rate of failure shows that these proposals are motivated by electoral aspirations, rather than coming from a genuine wish to help migrants or grant them citizenship. Furthermore, there is also an economic interest that justifies the maintenance of low-cost disposable immigrant labor, with no right to citizenship. Our analysis is an example of how state regulation processes seem to work to formalize, rather than alleviate or eradicate, the precarious legal statuses of illegalized migrants. We conclude that a globalized phenomenon such as citizenship requires going beyond merely institutional and formal conceptions. We need to rethink the institutional notion of citizenship, as a merely status held under the authority of a state and consider it from a cosmopolitan perspective and a multilateral basis. But as long as citizenship remains under the responsibility of states, illegalized migrants will continue to experience precarious citizenship. (shrink)