Mentalizing is an important actual topic, both in psychodynamic theory and in clinical practice. Remarkably, mentalizing has been explicitly related to religion or psychology of religion only to a limited extent. This article explores the relevance of the concept of mentalizing for psychology of religion by first describing mentalizing, its development, and neuropsychological underpinnings. Second, to illustrate how the concept gives more insight into the psychology of religious phenomena, mentalizing is related to an almost universal religious practice, namely religious prayer. (...) Empirical studies from different psychological subdisciplines are interpreted from the perspective of mentalizing. Finally, its relevance for the discipline of psychology of religion is discussed. In this way, the potential of the concept as both an explaining psychological mechanism and a bridging notion that overcomes differences between psychological subdisciplines is demonstrated. (shrink)

This article focuses on the difference between the personal God image and the God image that people perceive as normative, that is to say, the God image they believe they should have according to religious culture. A sample of 544 Dutch respondents, of which 244 received psychotherapy, completed the Dutch Questionnaire of God Images . In general, there appeared to be a discrepancy between the personal and the normative God image. Whether discrepancies were experienced as conflictive was related to religious (...) denomination and mental health. Conflictive feelings were associated with lower religious saliency and higher educational level. Moreover, they were associated with mental health per se and the interaction between mental health and denomination, with patients reporting more conflicts than normals except in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox-Reformed group, where patients and non-patients hardly differed in the experience of conflict. (shrink)

Radical democrats highlight dramatic moments of political action, which disrupt everyday habits of perception that sustain unequal social relations. In doing so, however, we sometimes neglect how social conditions—such as precarious employment, social dislocation, and everyday exposure to violence—undermine political agency or might be contested in uneventful ways. Despite their differences, two thinkers who have significantly influenced radical democratic theory (Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière) have been similarly criticized for contributing to such a socially weightless picture of politics. However, attending (...) to how they are each preoccupied by the social conditions of inequality and loneliness enables us to recognize two distinct aspects of democratic politics–emancipation and civility. Cultivating an interpretive flexibility to shift between these aspects of politics might enable radical democrats to more clearly picture how struggles for appearance are limited and shaped by the social conditions within which they are enacted. (shrink)

Are there any viable semiotic objections to commodification? A semiotic objection holds that even if there is no independent consequentialist or deontic objection to the marketing of a good—such as that it is exploitative or causes third party harm—there remains a problem with what is said by participating in that market. Recent discussion of semiotic objections have suffered from a basic ambiguity in such talk. As Grice pointed out, there is a difference between saying that smoke on the horizon means (...) fire, and saying that it means there will be war tomorrow. We could say that in the former case smoke indicates fire because of its causal connection with fire, while in the latter case smoke expresses a call to war because that is the non-natural meaning given to it by convention or by its place in a communicative practice. The recent defenses of semiotic objections presented by Anthony Booth, Jacob Sparks, and Mark Wells do not survive this distinction, as they either complain about non-semiotic facts that are indicated rather than expressed by markets, or they complain about semiotic features of markets, but these complaints inevitably collapse into weak consequentialist objections. But this result is not bad for anticommodificationists, as semiotic objections have dialectical disadvantages. (shrink)

This article considers how reconciliation might be understood as a democratic undertaking. It does so by examining the implications of the debate between theorists of ‘deliberative’ and ‘agonistic’ democracy for the practice of democracy in divided societies. I argue that, in taking consensus as a regulative idea, deliberative democracy tends to conflate moral and political community thereby representing conflict as already communal. In contrast, an agonistic theory of democracy provides a critical perspective from which to discern what is at stake (...) in the politics of reconciliation since it understands community as a contingent achievement of political action. As such, an agonistic account of democracy suggests the possibility of retrieving the concept of reconciliation from a statesanctioned project of nation-building for a democratic politics centred on the possibilities of self-determination and solidarity among citizens divided by a history of state violence. Key Words: agonism • deliberation • democracy • reconciliation • transitional justice. (shrink)

In her influential discussion of the plight of stateless people, Hannah Arendt invokes the ‘right to have rights’ as the one true human right. In doing so she establishes an aporia. If statelessness corresponds not only to a situation of rightlessness but also to a life deprived of public appearance, how could those excluded from politics possibly claim the right to have rights? In this article I examine Jacques Rancière’s response to Arendt’s aporetic account of human rights, situating this in (...) relation to his wider criticism of Arendt’s conception of the political. According to Rancière, Arendt depoliticizes human rights in identifying the human with mere life (zoë) and the citizen with the good life (bios politikos). For, in doing so, she takes the distinction between zoë and the bios politikos to be ontologically given whereas politics is typically about contesting how that distinction is drawn. For Rancière ‘the human’ in human rights does not refer to a life deprived of politics. Rather, the human is a litigious name that politicizes the distinction between those who are qualified to participate in politics and those who are not. In contrast to Arendt, Rancière’s approach enables us to recognize contests over human rights, such as that of the sans papiers, as part and parcel of social struggles that are the core of political life. (shrink)

Prison work creates ethical challenges for which a training program was initiated for Dutch prison staff to foster their Moral Craftsmanship (MCS). The concept of MCS is not yet defined and operationalized in literature. This explorative study aims to 1) define MCS, 2) identify conceptual elements of MCS, and 3) develop a measurement tool for MCS. A document and literature study provided input for the definition and selection of conceptual elements related within DCIA policy documents, identifying three conceptual levels of (...) MCS: individual (cognition, attitude, and actions), team, and leadership. This first MCSQ consists of seventy-one items distributed across the domains: values and norms, judgment and reasoning, consultation, implementation, looking back, interactions, and leadership. We tested its usability via ‘think-aloud interviews.’ Validation of the current version of the MCS-Questionnaire and consensus among experts about what to include or exclude in the concept of MCS are needed for further development. (shrink)

Some observers of the data economy have proposed that we treat data as labor. But are data contributions labor? Our folk conception of work emphasizes its importance and effort, such that work has a special interpersonal priority and deserves appreciation and compensation. The folk conception does not generally favor counting data as work, and so it serves as an error theory for reluctance to regulate data as labor. In contrast, labor regulation and policy focus on the political economy of labor, (...) and in particular the bargaining dynamics that participants in a labor market face. Labor regulation aims to protect workers against the threats characteristically posed by such bargaining dynamics. Data-transferring interactions between internet platforms and users share similar bargaining dynamics, and so there is a promising functional similarity between labor regulation and proposals for data regulation that would facilitate data strikes and data unions. (shrink)

While algorithmic decision-making (ADM) is projected to increase exponentially in the coming decades, the academic debate on whether people are ready to accept, trust, and use ADM as opposed to human decision-making is ongoing. The current research aims at reconciling conflicting findings on ‘algorithmic aversion’ in the literature. It does so by investigating algorithmic aversion while controlling for two important characteristics that are often associated with ADM: increased benefits (monetary and accuracy) and decreased user control. Across three high-powered (Ntotal = (...) 1192), preregistered 2 (agent: algorithm/human) × 2 (benefits: high/low) × 2 (control: user control/no control) between-subjects experiments, and two domains (finance and dating), the results were quite consistent: there is little evidence for a default aversion against algorithms and in favor of human decision makers. Instead, users accept or reject decisions and decisional agents based on their predicted benefits and the ability to exercise control over the decision. (shrink)

Forever Fluid is a rich feast of literary and philosophical insight. It provides the first English commentary on Luce Irigaray’s poetic text, Elemental Passions, setting it within its context within continental thought. It explores Irigaray’s images and intentions, developing the gender drama that takes place within her book, and draws the reader into the conversation in the text between ‘I-woman’ and ‘you-man’. But the book is also much more than this, as it uses the exploration of sexual difference as a (...) means to challenge the system of binary logic which has pervaded western thought since Aristotle. It develops the exciting idea of a fluid logic which can move beyond oppositions to multiple subjects and creativity of thought and action. While challenging Irigaray’s refusal to move beyond sexual difference, the book shows how her representation of sexual difference enables appreciation of difference of all kinds. (shrink)

Grootenboer is interested in art as philosophy, that is, art as a consideration of thinking. She insists that early modern art can be viewed through the lenses of contemporary interest and means. She argues that art is capable of articulating thoughts and shaping concepts in visual terms, and thus directly engages with the development of philosophical ideas. In particular, she explores the ways seventeenth-century paintings, in the wake of the Reformation and the rise of humanism, became sites of speculation about (...) the possibilities and limitations of thinking as such. She focuses not on how thought is expressed in pictorial statements but on what remains unspoken in painting, implicit, and inexpressible--a quality that she calls pensiveness. Different from the self-aware images propounded by W. J. T. Mitchell, which seem in control of the interpretations they elicit, pensive images are speculative, pointing beyond mere interpretation. As an alternative pictorial category, akin to narrative or allegorical painting, pensive images can articulate the complexities of philosophical ideas, and thus gain new relevance in more recent debates on the nature of the image in visual culture. (shrink)

SUMMARYIn most answers to the question whether sacrifice is justified, the ‘sake’ for which a sacrifice is demanded plays a crucial role. Furthermore, this sake is essential in order to be able to distinguish sacrifice from plain suicide or murder. I start with examining two strong philosophical justifications of sacrifice. According to Hegel in his Philosophy of Right, the notion of sacrifice is vital for the preservation of the ethical health of nations insofar as it makes the individuals aware of (...) the fact that they are nothing without the state. Levinas introduces the notion of sacrifice in connection with his idea of hostageship: my hostageship means that I am elected by the other to sacrifice myself for the sake of the good. The analysis of these two positions shows that the notions of asymmetry and dispossession are essential to every form of sacrifice. The fact that these notions also belong to the essence of religion explains why sacrifice plays such a predominant role in religious contexts. However, explaining the mechanism of sacrifice is not identical with its justification. I focus on three justificational grounds: the ethical priority of the sake of sacrifice; the necessity of a hope for a ‘return’ for my sacrifice, while simultaneously maintaining its asymmetrical and dispossessive nature; and, finally, the need for a reasonable discussion on the legitimacy of the sake of sacrifice, presupposing that nobody can rightfully claim to incarnate this sake but can only represent it. (shrink)

Many young Christians are waking up to the realities of climate change but just don't know how to help. Through stories from the field, theological and scriptural exploration, and practical advice, this field guide from Christian climate activist Kyle Meyaard-Schaap helps us take meaningful action grounded in the joy of caring for creation.

Hanneke Stuit delves into Ubuntu's relevance both in South Africa and in Western contexts, analyzing the political and ethical ramifications of the term's uses in different media including literature, cartoons, journalistic fiction, commercials, commodities, photography, and political manifestos in contemporary South African culture.

This article is intended as a response rather than counterpoint to Bennett's careful argument that amnesty cannot amount to an act of collective forgiveness. I agree that a state cannot forgive perpetrators of grave human rights violations. However, I am concerned that conceiving the question of amnesty strictly in terms of a choice between the Art of Compromise or the Hard Line of retribution may unduly limit our understanding of the potential relation between amnesty and forgiveness in politics. To show (...) this, I consider the question of amnesty in relation to the possibility of forgiving those ordinary citizens implicated in the perpetration of wrongs as bystanders and beneficiaries of an unjust regime. Following Arendt, I argue that political grounds for forgiveness in such circumstances are the frailty of the world and the natality of the other . On this account, forgiveness is not necessarily the final term in a process of reconciliation that restores a wrongdoer to the moral community. Rather, the disposition to forgive makes possible a politics in which members of a divided polity contest each other's understandings of the violence of the past and its significance for their political association. (shrink)

This thought provoking volume will be of interest to students and researchers working in the areas of legal and political theory and philosophy.

Empathy is important in our digitized and polarized world and an important aspect of education. What contribution can history teachers make to develop this in their students? In this study we investigated whether a lesson unit making use of eyewitnesses and designed from six pedagogical principles, resulted in more confidence in the ability to empathize, attributed importance to empathy and understanding of empathy by 10th grade students. In addition, we investigated the differences between two conditions: the use of a guest (...) speaker versus eyewitnesses in a documentary. In this quasi-experimental intervention study, we used a pretest-posttest-follow-up design. The data were collected via questionnaires containing closed and open questions. The results showed that students (N = 97) in both conditions gained confidence in their ability to empathize and improved their ability to explain what empathy means and why it is important. After two months, progress on these items was still significant. In the condition with the guest speaker students scored significantly higher on understanding empathy than students who participated in the lesson unit with the documentary. This study contributes to the understanding of developing empathy through the use of eyewitnesses in history classes and the measurement of students’ understanding of empathy. (shrink)

Cet article se concentre sur le contrecoup sociopolitique de la pandémie de Covid-19 et utilise le cadre de la philosophie de Hegel pour l’analyser. Premièrement, l’article étudie les protestations de principe de diverses personnes contre les mesures imposées par l’État pour contrôler la pandémie. Sur la base de l’analyse de Hegel de la double reconnaissance entre l’État et ses membres, sur laquelle reposent les démocraties modernes, on soutient que ces protestataires de principe refusent de reconnaître l’État comme l’effectivité de la (...) liberté publique, soulignant ainsi la fragilité inhérente des États modernes. Pour justifier leurs positions, les contestataires ont argué qu’ils ne se sentent pas reconnus par l’État. Comme solution à ce problème, il est suggéré que l’État doit développer de nouvelles façons d’intégrer ces personnes, non seulement à travers son cadre juridique et institutionnel, mais aussi sur le plan économique et socioculturel. Deuxièmement, l’article réfléchit à l’impact de la pandémie sur les relations interétatiques à l’aide de la thèse de Hegel selon laquelle un lien fédérant les nations européennes pourrait régler pacifiquement les conflits entre les États dans cette région du monde. On avance pour finir que l’impact mondial de la pandémie et de nombreuses autres crises (changement climatique, répartition inégale des richesses, etc.) crée un terrain d’entente, offrant une raison d’étendre l’approche européenne de résolution des crises interétatiques à d’autres parties du globe. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDieser Aufsatz erörtert einige philosophische Fragen in Bezug auf Bayers Vergegenwärtigung Luthers. Die Einbeziehung der Philosophie bietet der Theologie sowohl Chancen als auch Risiken. Einerseits kann die Philosophie zwischen einem religiösen oder theologischen Vokabular und der gegenwärtigen säkularen Gesellschaft vermitteln; andererseits riskiert die Theologie auf diese Weise eine Beeinflussung durch die innerweltlichen Kategorien der Philosophie. Diese zweite Position scheint die Bayers zu sein, da er die Beziehung von Philosophie und Theologie als Dissonanz interpretiert. Um zu untersuchen, ob und auf welche (...) Weise die Philosophie als Vermittlerin zwischen der Religion und der säkularen Gesellschaft fungieren kann, konzentriere ich mich auf ein gemeinsames Merkmal von Philosophie und Theologie, darauf, dass sie alle Arten überlieferter Weisheit in Frage stellen, um wahre, theologisch oder philosophisch bewährte Weisheit zu bieten.Zunächst analysiere ich Bayers Konzeption der Theologie als persönliche, traditionsgebundene Weisheit. Er entwickelt diesen Gedanken im Kontrast mit Kants kritischer Beurteilung der Weisheit in seiner Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, derzufolge die Wissenschaft die einzige enge Pforte ist, die zur Weisheit führt. Nach Bayer ist der Eintrittspreis viel zu hoch, insofern er ein Reduktion der Theologie auf Wissenschaft erfordert. Im Gegensatz dazu versteht er theologische Weisheit als Metakritik, die in der Mitte zwischen Dogmatismus und Skeptizismus steht.In meinen Bemerkungen zu Bayers Position beginne ich mit der Definition der Weisheit als einer Form von Wissen, die Menschen hilft, die wahre Bestimmung ihres Lebens zu finden. In unserer postmodernen Situation wird jedoch die Plausibilität des Wahrheitsanspruches in Frage gestellt, der in dieser Definition beinhaltet ist. Alle unsere Vokabulare über die Bestimmungen unseres Lebens, ob religiös, theologisch oder philosophisch, werden als radikal kontingent und äquivok wahrgenommen. In der Konsequenz ist Weisheit zur Privatmeinung einer Person oder einer Gruppe Gleichgesinnter geworden. Obwohl ich mit Bayers Kritik der Privatisierung der Weisheit übereinstimme, scheint mir seine Argumentation zugunsten einer theologischen Weisheit, die auf Grund von Gottes persönlicher Anrede über jeden Ideologieverdacht erhaben ist, höchst problematisch zu sein. Obwohl die Religion ein enormes kritisches Potential in Bezug auf die Ideologien unserer Zeit hat, überzeugt das säkulare Zeitgenossen kaum, weil sie die Religion selbst als eine Form der Ideologie betrachten. Deshalb schlage ich mithilfe von Kants Essay Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientieren? einen anderen Zugang zur notwendigen Kritik der religiösen Weisheit vor, die sich im Unterschied zum Begriff der Wissenschaft am Begriff der Vernunft orientiert. Dies führt zu einer weniger dissonanten Beziehung zwischen Philosophie und Theologie als bei Bayer.SummaryThe focus of this article is to raise some philosophical questions concerning Bayer's aim of making topical the theology of Luther. The involvement of philosophy offers both opportunities and risks for theology. On the one hand, philosophy can mediate between a religious or theological vocabulary and contemporary secular society; on the other, however, theology runs the risk of being affected by the inner-worldly categories of philosophy. The latter position seems to be the one of Bayer since he defines the relation between philosophy and theology as a discordant one. In order to examine if and how philosophy can serve as a mediator between religion and secular society, I concentrate on a common characteristic of theology and philosophy, viz. that they query all kinds of traditional wisdom in order to offer true, theologically or philosophically corroborated wisdom.First, I analyse Bayer's idea of theology as personal, traditional wisdom. He develops it through a confrontation with Kant's critical assessment of wisdom in his Critique of Practical Reason, according to which science is the only narrow entrance gate that leads to wisdom. According to Bayer, the entrance fee is far too high, since is implies an imoverishing reduction of theology to science. Instead, he understands theological wisdom as meta-criticism, standing in the middle between dogmatism and scepticism.In my comment on Bayer's position, I start from the definition of wisdom as a kind of knowledge, helping humans to find the true destiny of their lives. However, in our post-modern times, the plausibility of the truth-claim implied in this definition is being challenged. All our vocabularies about the destinies of our lives, be they religious, theological, or philosophical, are perceived as radically contingent and equivocal. Consequently, wisdom has become a private opinion of a person or a group of like-minded people. Although I agree with Bayer's critique of the privatisation of wisdom, his argument in favour of a theological wisdom which claims to be above any suspicion of being ideological in character because of God's personal address, seems highly problematic to me. Although religion has an enormous critical potential with regard to the ideologies of our times, it does not convince contemporary, secularised people, because they perceive religion itself as a form of ideology. Therefore, I propose, with the help of Kant's, What Does it Mean to Orientate Oneself in Thinking, another approach of the necessary critique of religious wisdom, which is based on the concept of reason, as distinct from science. This leads to a less discordant view of the relationship between philosophy and theology than Bayer's. (shrink)

Are hierarchical arrangements in the workplace, including the employer-employee relationship, consistent with the ideal of relating to one another as moral equals? With this question at its core, this volume of essays by leading moral and political philosophers explores ideas about justice in the workplace, contributing to both political philosophy and business ethics. Relational egalitarians propose that the ideal of equality is primarily an ideal of social relationships and view the equality of social relationships as having priority over the distributive (...) arrangements. Yet contemporary workplaces are characterized by hierarchical employer-employee relationships. The essays push discussions of the relational egalitarian tradition in new directions, helping to show its promise and its limits. They address pressing concerns at a time of widening inequality and rapid changes in the nature of work. (shrink)

Moral theories often issue general principles that explain our moral judgments in terms of underlying moral considerations. But it is unclear whether the general principles have an explanatory role beyond the underlying moral considerations. In order to avoid the redundancy of their principles, two-level theories issue principles that appear to generalize beyond the considerations that ground them. In doing so, the principles appear to overgeneralize. The problem is conspicuous in the case of contractualism, which proposes that moral principles are grounded (...) in generic reasons that operate in only a subset of the cases covered by the relevant principle. Arguments that motivate the use of generic reasons on the basis of guidance, institutional necessity, or fairness are unsatisfactory. But the generality of moral principles can be justified in terms of the idea of a generic interest, which is an interest that all occupants of a standpoint have in virtue of what occupants of the standpoint as such typically take an interest in. The notion of a generic interest therefore acknowledges a distinction between having and taking an interest, and its use in moral theory is a way of giving expression to the significance of autonomy. This is reminiscent of the idea of a normative power; but the idea of a generic interest is less expensive and makes better sense of the way in which autonomy features in our moral lives. (shrink)

Discrimination is typically understood to be a comparative phenomenon: S is discriminated against on the basis of trait T if she would not have been treated in the same way if she did not possess T. But the comparative test for discrimination may hide from view some important cases: associational discrimination and stereotype policing. These cases show more clearly what is true of discrimination in general: that it involves a vicarious wrong, that is, an action which wrongs someone other than (...) the primary object of disregard. This suggests why philosophers disagree whether discrimination is wrong because it causes harm or because it expresses disrespect. Paradigmatic cases of discrimination involve both harm and disrespect, but direct the harm and the disrespect towards different targets by treating the harmed individual as a mere representative of the targeted group. Discrimination is dehumanizing, and morally distinctive, precisely because of this fact. (shrink)

The conscious awareness of voluntary action is associated with systematic changes in time perception: The interval between actions and outcomes is experienced as compressed in time. Although this temporal binding is thought to result from voluntary movement and provides a window to the sense of agency, recent studies challenge this idea by demonstrating binding in involuntary movement. We offer a potential account for these findings by proposing that binding between involuntary actions and effects can occur when self-causation is implied. Participants (...) made temporal judgements concerning a key press and a tone, while they learned to consider themselves as the cause of the effect or not. Results showed that implied self-causation increased temporal binding. Since intrinsic motor cues of movement were absent, these results suggest that sensory evidence about the key press caused binding in retrospect and in line with the participant’s sense of being an agent. (shrink)

The paper demonstrates that social alignment is distinct from value alignment as it is currently understood in the AI safety literature, and argues that social alignment is an important research agenda. Work provides an important example for the argument, since work is a cooperative endeavor, and it is part of the larger manifold of social cooperation. These cooperative aspects of work are individually and socially valuable, and so they must be given a central place when evaluating the impact of AI (...) upon work. Workplace technologies are not simply instruments for achieving productive goals, but ways of mediating interpersonal relations. They are aspects of a cooperative interface i.e. the infrastructure by which we engage cooperative behavior with others. The concept of the cooperative interface suggests two conjectures to foreground in the social alignment agenda, motivated by the experience of algorithmic trading and social robotics: that AI impacts cooperation through its effects on social networks, and through its effects on social norms. (shrink)