Coastal environments are increasingly shown to have a positive effect on our health and well-being. Various mechanisms have been suggested to explain this effect. However, so far little focus has been devoted to emotions that might be relevant in this context, especially for people who are directly or indirectly exposed to the coast on a daily basis. Our preregistered qualitative study explored how coastal residents experience the emotions they feel at the coast and how they interpret the effect these emotions (...) have on them. We conducted semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of eight Belgian coastal residents aged 21–25 years old. The interviews were analyzed with the approach of interpretative phenomenological analysis. Five superordinate themes were identified and indicate that, for our participants, the coast represents a safe haven in which they can experience emotional restoration, awe, and nostalgia. These emotional states are accompanied with adaptive emotion regulating strategies, such as reflection and positive reappraisal, that may facilitate coping with difficult thoughts and feelings. Our study demonstrates the importance of investigating specific emotions and related processes triggered at the coast and how these could contribute to the therapeutic value of the coast. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed account and discussion of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. In Part I, the stage is set with a brief presentation of Frege's logicist attempt to provide arithmetic with a foundation and Wittgenstein's criticisms of it, followed by sketches of Wittgenstein's early views of mathematics, in the Tractatus and in the early 1930s. Then, Wittgenstein's mature philosophy of mathematics is carefully presented and examined. Schroeder explains that it is based on two key ideas: the calculus view (...) and the grammar view. On the one hand, mathematics is seen as a human activity -- calculation -- rather than a theory. On the other hand, the results of mathematical calculations serve as grammatical norms. The following chapters explore the tension between those two key ideas and suggest a way in which it can be resolved. Finally, there are chapters analysing and defending Wittgenstein's provocative views on Hilbert's Formalism and the quest for consistency proofs and on Gödel's incompleteness theorems. (shrink)

Wittgenstein offers three objections to the idea of aesthetics as a branch of psychology: (i) Statistical data about people’s preferences have no normative force. (ii) Artistic value is not instrumental value, a capacity to produce independently identifiable – and scientifically measurable – psychological effects. (iii) While psychological investigations may bring to light the causes of aesthetic preferences, they fail to provide reasons for them. According to Wittgenstein, aesthetic explanations (unlike scientific explanations) are poignant synoptic representations of aspects of a work, (...) and the criterion of success of an aesthetic explanation is that it satisfies the addressee. He repeatedly remarked that they resemble philosophical explanations, which also try to dispel puzzlement or confusion. The difference, however, is that whereas in philosophy we deal with general conceptual problems, aesthetic explanations typically concern individual responses to particular works of art. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV V Notes References.

It is widely held that whenever someone φs, that person tries to do φ. I examine arguments by B. O’Shaughnessy and J. Hornsby, and considerations by P. Grice in support of that thesis. I argue that none of them are convincing. The remainder of the paper defends an analysis of the concept of trying along the lines opposed by Grice et al. By speaking of someone’s trying to φ the speaker leaves the room for failure or the possibility of failure. (...) This account of the function of the word ‘try’ makes it clear what is wrong with the claim that whenever someone φs, that person tries to do φ. For that claim amounts to saying that every action is either a failure or a possible failure – which clearly one can’t say of any action that one has already acknowledged to be successful. Furthermore, whether an action is possibly a failure depends on how much one knows about it. Hence the question whether in itself an action does or does not involve trying is as misguided as the question whether it’s intrinsically unexpected. It may be correct for some to describe it as ‘an attempt to φ’, but incorrect for others. (shrink)

Contrary to a widespread interpretation, Wittgenstein did not regard credal statements as merely metaphorical expressions of an attitude towards life. He accepted that Christian faith involves belief in God's existence. At the same time he held that although as a hypothesis, God's existence is extremely implausible, Christian faith is not unreasonable. Is that a consistent view? According to Wittgenstein, religious faith should not be seen as a hypothesis, based on evidence, but as grounded in a proto‐religious attitude, a way of (...) experiencing the world or certain aspects of it. A belief in religious metaphysics is not the basis of one's faith, but a mere epiphenomenon. Given further that religious doctrine is both falsification‐transcendent and that religious faith is likely to have beneficial psychological effects, religious doctrine can be exempt from ordinary standards of epistemic support. An unsupported religious belief need not be unreasonable. However, it is hard to see how one could knowingly have such an unsupported belief, as Wittgenstein seems to envisage. How can one believe what, at the same time, one believes is not likely to be true? This, I argue, is the unresolved tension in Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Wittgenstein shows that understanding is a capacity, and cannot be accounted for by mental representations of what is understood. But if a person’s understanding or thinking cannot be accounted for by occurrences of mental representations, then understanding that person cannot be a matter of knowing what is going on inside him or her: what representations he or she has in his or her mind. That, I argue, is the point of Wittgenstein’s famous and frequently misunderstood saying, “If a lion could (...) talk we wouldn’t be able to understand it.” Our inability to understand a strange creature would not be overcome if that creature could speak and lay open to us on the mental operations inside its mind. Finally, I explain in what way understanding other people is not an entirely intellectual affair, but also has moral and aesthetic dimensions. -/- . (shrink)

According to Wittgenstein, mathematical propositions are rules of grammar, that is, conventions, or implications of conventions. So his position can be regarded as a form of conventionalism. However, mathematical conventionalism is widely thought to be untenable due to objections presented by Quine, Dummett and Crispin Wright. It has also been argued that only an implausibly radical form of conventionalism could withstand the critical implications of Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. In this article I discuss those objections to conventionalism and argue that none (...) of them is convincing. (shrink)

It is widely thought that Bayesian confirmation theory has provided a solution to Hempel's Paradox (the Ravens Paradox). I discuss one well‐known example of this approach, by John Mackie, and argue that it is unconvincing. I then suggest an alternative solution, which shows that the Bayesian approach is altogether mistaken. Nicod's Condition should be rejected because a generalisation is not confirmed by any of its instances if it is not law‐like. And even law‐like non‐basic empirical generalisations, which are expressions of (...) assumed underlying causal regularities, are not so confirmed if they are absurd in the light of our causal background knowledge or if their instances are not also possible instances of the relevant causal claim. (shrink)

Peter Kivy’s contour theory provides a promising explanation of the way we describe instrumental music as expressive of emotions. I argue that if, unlike Kivy, we emphasise the metaphorical character of such descriptions, the contour theory, as a strategy for unpacking such metaphors, can be defended convincingly against common objections. This approach is more satisfactory than those of Scruton and Peacocke, who make much of metaphorical experiences, but leave the underlying metaphors unexplained. Moreover, it gives the contour theory a wider (...) scope than Kivy intended, for even very specific narrative descriptions of music in non-musical terms are perfectly legitimate as long as they are presented, and justified, as metaphors, that is, as mere comparisons, rather than as interpretative claims about the music’s actual contents. (shrink)

In his monograph Dreaming (1959), Normal Malcolm puts forward the following three theses: (1) The temporal location of dreams as taking place in one’s sleep is not an empirical fact, but determined by grammar. (2) This grammatical determination does not allow dreams a precise date in physical time. (3) Dreams do not consist of mental occurrences. I argue that (1) is indeed perfectly true, whereas (2) is false; (3) is not borne out by Malcolm’s verificationist main argument, although it can (...) be shown to be largely true for other considerations. (shrink)

In the so-called private language argument, Wittgenstein argues both against the alleged epistemological privacy of sensations and against their alleged ontological privacy, that is, the common view that somebody else cannot have my pain. A prominent proponent of the claim of sensations' ontological privacy was Gottlob Frege, whose position has recently been defended by Wolfgang Künne. This paper reconsiders Wittgenstein's objections to ontological privacy and attempts to defend Wittgenstein's position against Künne's Frege-inspired arguments.

This paper explores Wittgenstein's attempts to explain the peculiarities of the first-person use of 'believe' that manifest themselves in Moore's paradox, discussed in, Part II, section x. An utterance of the form 'p and I do not believe that p' is a kind of contradiction, for the second conjunct is not, as it might appear, just a description of my mental state, but an expression of my belief that not-p, contradicting the preceding expression of my belief that p. Thus, 'I (...) believe that p' is just a stylistic variant of 'p'; the word 'believe' doesn't seem to have a substantial role to play in such an utterance. Following Wittgenstein, I discuss why there could not be a first-person present-tense use of the word that was more akin to its use in the third person: why it is impossible to describe one's own current beliefs in a detached manner without thereby expressing them. In the final section, I try to develop Wittgenstein's suggestion that the non-epistemic authority we have regarding the contents of our beliefs can be clarified by considering its link with intention and action. (shrink)

In response to Felix Mühlhölzer’s critical discussion of my book Wittgenstein on Mathematics (2021), I argue against his main objections, in particular his view that one shouldn’t even look for coherence in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, and his claim that Wittgenstein’s insistence on the empirical applicability of mathematical concepts need not be taken seriously because in one passage it is prefaced by the words ‘I want to say’. I also correct a number of irksome misunderstandings in Mühlhölzer’s review. Repeatedly he (...) ascribes to me a position that I merely present for discussion – and reject or qualify in the end. In particular, he wrongly ascribes to me the empiricist view that mathematical propositions are derived from experience. Some of Wittgenstein’s remarks seem to express such a view, so I discuss it but conclude that, some exceptions apart, it is untenable and also inconsistent with Wittgenstein’s key ideas about mathematical proof. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a genetic account of how Wittgenstein developed his ideas on aesthetics in his 1933 lectures. He argued that the word ‘beautiful’ is neither the name of a particular perceptible quality, nor the name of whatever produces a certain psychological effect, and unlike ‘good’, it does not stand for a family-resemblance concept either. Rather, the word ‘beautiful’ has different meanings in different contexts as we apply it according to different criteria. However, in more advanced regions of (...) aesthetics the word ‘beautiful’ ceases to play an important role. Instead, we judge things to be more or less correct according to genre-specific standards or criteria, which in an aesthetic discussion are presupposed, rather than argued for. Finally, Wittgenstein came to realise that providing support for an aesthetic appraisal according to some given criteria is not the only and perhaps not even the main focus of aesthetic discussion. More interesting to him became the idea of a puzzle or perplexity in aesthetics, which he discussed in greater detail in his 1938 lectures. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:I. The Concept of Beatific EnjoymentThe locus classicus for the medieval scholastic discussion of beatific enjoyment is the first distinction of Book I of Peter Lombard's Sentences. Lombard extracts three distinct formulations of the term "enjoyment" from Augustine's writings. The first formulation is borrowed from the first book of Augustine's treatise On Christian Learning . The formulation states that "to enjoy is to inhere with love in something for (...) its own sake." The other two formulations are taken from Book X of Augustine's work On the Trinity . The first reads as follows: "we enjoy the things that we know, when the will rests, by delighting in them for their own sake." The second says that "to enjoy is to use with gladness , not merely through hope, but already in reality." These truncated statements served as technical definitions of the concept of enjoyment in scholastic Sentences commentaries. It was thought that the definitions call attention to the various psychological factors required for enjoyment to occur. For instance, the theologian Alexander of Hales explains that the definitions reveal distinct aspects of enjoyment with respect to the subject experiencing it and with respect to the object motivating the enjoyment. The expression "to inhere with love" refers to the soul on the part of the subject and to God on the part of the object. The saying "to use with gladness" relates to the power of the soul on the side of the subject and to created beatitude on the side of the object. Finally, the phrase "we enjoy the things that we know" corresponds to the faculty of the will as well as to the uncreated divine persons. Alexander would thus say that an adequate treatment of Augustine's concept of enjoyment must take into account the subject involved in the activity of enjoyment – e.g., the human soul, the faculty of the will, the faculty of cognition, etc. – and the object or objects of an act of enjoyment – created beatitude, the persons of the Trinity, or simply God.A slightly different reading of Augustine's definitions of enjoyment is found in Thomas Aquinas's Sentences commentary. In his literal exposition of the first distinction of Lombard's Sentences, Thomas notes that a perfect definition of a thing must disclose all of its proper causes. He then offers an explanation of the way in which Augustine's three definitions aim to clarify the concept of enjoyment. According to Thomas, the statement "to inhere in something with love for its own sake" portrays the act of enjoyment in relation to the object as a thing worthy for its own sake and the habit of love causing the enjoyment. The second formulation – "we enjoy the things that we know, etc." – links the act of enjoyment with the faculty of cognition required for the activation of the will. The third formulation – "to enjoy is to use with gladness" – refers primarily to the property of delight , which accompanies the obtainment of the desired object and perfects the act of enjoyment. Thomas, thus, identifies three factors contributing to the occurrence of an act of enjoyment – habit, cognition, and delight . In the first article of the first question of his commentary on Book I of the Sentences, Thomas states that enjoyment is the ultimate happiness of a human being. Enjoyment requires the clear intellectual vision of God, it involves an union as well as a sort of a mutual penetration through love between the one who sees and the thing that is seen, and it culminates in supreme delight . Thomas also says that enjoyment is an act of the will manifesting the habit of charity. In his Summa theologiae Ia IIae, Thomas defines enjoyment as an act of the appetitive faculty , and.. (shrink)

Is the concept of a work of art an evaluative concept: does its application imply a positive evaluation? I shall discuss this question by considering two opposing attempts at defining art, namely the Institutional Theory and the view that art is a functional concept. I shall argue that the concept of art does not imply an unconditionally positive evaluation, but that art is a prestige concept. Moreover, it will be shown that functional definitions of art are flawed.

One of the key tenets in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics is that a mathematical proposition gets its meaning from its proof. This seems to have the paradoxical consequence that a mathematical conjecture has no meaning, or at least not the same meaning that it will have once a proof has been found. Hence, it would appear that a conjecture can never be proven true: for what is proven true must ipso facto be a different proposition from what was only conjectured. (...) Moreover, it would appear impossible that the same mathematical proposition be proven in different ways. — I will consider some of Wittgenstein’s remarks on these issues, and attempt to reconstruct his position in a way that makes it appear less paradoxical. (shrink)

The idea to write this essay came after I studied, almost in the same period, the works of two major contemporary philosophers: the US-American Michael Heim, known as the best theorist of virtual reality, and the French Gilles Deleuze. At the beginning of the new millennium, I have noticed many challenging transformations in art and literature, influenced by the emerging of the new technologies and the self-transformation that it is currently undergoing. This was the major reason I tried to launch (...) a new concept, post-literarure, in order to describe the complex forms of art in the contemporary culture. The concept of post-literature defines metamorphoses and tensions in the world of contemporary creativity, the co-existence, even merging of fields with autonomous profiles in the past. In my opinion the changes are so radical and quick that we can already talk about a new cultural paradigm in this post-literary epoch, with so many amazing projects imagined by kinetic and temporary organizations, focused on interdisciplinary work and hybridization, on substitution of confrontation between interfering disciplines by dialogue and cohabitation among them, on interchangeability and virtual textualism. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed account and discussion of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. In Part I, the stage is set with a brief presentation of Frege's logicist attempt to provide arithmetic with a foundation and Wittgenstein's criticisms of it, followed by sketches of Wittgenstein's early views of mathematics, in the Tractatus and in the early 1930s. Then (in Part II), Wittgenstein's mature philosophy of mathematics (1937-44) is carefully presented and examined. Schroeder explains that it is based on two key (...) ideas: the calculus view and the grammar view. On the one hand, mathematics is seen as a human activity - calculation - rather than a theory. On the other hand, the results of mathematical calculations serve as grammatical norms. The following chapters (on mathematics as grammar; rule-following; conventionalism; the empirical basis of mathematics; the role of proof) explore the tension between those two key ideas and suggest a way in which it can be resolved. Finally, there are chapters analysing and defending Wittgenstein's provocative views on Hilbert's Formalism and the quest for consistency proofs and on Gödel's incompleteness theorems. (shrink)

This paper responds to Severin Schroeder's recent charge that Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion contains an ‘unresolved tension’ between three propositions, namely: (1) ‘As a hypothesis, God's existence (&c) is extremely implausible’; (2) ‘Christian faith is not unreasonable’; and (3) ‘Christian faith does involve belief in God's existence (&c)’. I argue as follows: that the first of these propositions has no place in Wittgenstein's thinking on religion; that the second is ill-phrased and should be re-worded as the proposition that ‘Christian (...) faith is neither unreasonable nor reasonable’; and that the third proposition (contrary to what Schroeder seems to assume) tells us nothing about the nature of the objects of religious belief. It follows from my argument that Schroeder has not exposed a tension in Wittgenstein's thoughts on religion. I end with some positive remarks about Wittgenstein's method. (shrink)

In his historical novel from 1835, Prince Otto of Denmark and his Time, the poet Bernhard Severin Ingemann (1789-1862) established the unknown, yet historical character, Prince Otto of Denmark (1310-1346) as the hero of the novel. This choice has puzzled critics ever since, due to the fact that Prince Otto seems less a potential king than his brother Valdemar IV (1320-1372) who actually became a king of Denmark. Georg Brandes (1842-1927) claimed that Otto mirrored Ingemann’s persona as weak and (...) feminine, a “monk” not suited for kingship. In his ridicule of Prince Otto and Ingemann, Brandes reveals his ideas about gender, masculinity and femininity, but as this article seeks to show, such ideas are tied to time and place. Read from the distance of 2019, Ingemann’s feminine medieval hero might seem more modern and progressive than Brandes would have him. In this sense, the article is a piece of “queer medievalism”. (shrink)

Beatific Enjoyment in Medieval Scholastic Debates traces the reception of Saint Augustine’s concept of beatific enjoyment in Peter Lombard’s Sentences. It identifies the main themes and problems which shaped the discussion of the concept in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century scholastic commentaries. Bringing together theological and scientific approaches to the idea of enjoyment, Severin Kitanov exposes the intricacy of the discourse and develops a new perspective for students and scholars.

This book offers a lucid and highly readable account of Wittgenstein's philosophy, framed against the background of his extraordinary life and character. Woven together with a biographical narrative, the chapters explain the key ideas of Wittgenstein's work, from his first book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, to his mature masterpiece, the Philosophical Investigations.

According to Wittgenstein, mathematics is embedded in, and partly constituting, a form of life. Hence, to imagine different, alternative forms of elementary mathematics, we should have to imagine different practices, different forms of life in which they could play a role. If we tried to imagine a radically different arithmetic we should think either of a strange world or of people acting and responding in very peculiar ways. If such was their practice, a calculus expressing the norms of representation they (...) applied could not be called false. Rather, our criticism could only be to dismiss such a practice as foolish and to dismiss their norms as too different from ours to be called ‘mathematics’. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Voluntary Action Reasons and Causes References.

The article explores the tensions of belonging by focusing on the clash between nostalgic and universal values. Because of the inherent tension that they share, the concepts of Bildung and nostalgia provide an opening for understanding human belonging as ranging between nostalgic rootedness and the search for universality. Johann Gottfried Herder’s and Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig’s theories of Bildung, exemplify this clash between nostalgic and universal values. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s thinking offers a theory of Bildung that transcends nostalgic values (...) and points to the world as a place of belonging. In this article I problematize feelings of nostalgia, such as a sense of national belonging, by demonstrating how they might turn into educational values that exclude individuals who do not share the same idea of home and sense of belonging. I employ Agnes Heller’s term ‘value- orientational categories’ to understand how feelings might transform into values. I question and discuss nostalgia’s potential to uphold diversity, given human longing for local versions of home with different languages, cultures, and customs. I then suggest that embracing nostalgia in an educational context can provide a foundation for fostering universal values such as diversity, openness, and flexibility among citizens. Barbara Cassin’s vision of the ‘world freed from belonging’ and her idea of ‘airborne roots’ contribute to this discussion. (shrink)

“Grammar” is Ludwig Wittgenstein's preferred term for the workings of a language: the system of rules that determine linguistic meaning. A philosophical study of language is a study of “grammar”, in this sense, and insofar as any philosophical investigation is concerned with conceptual details, which manifest themselves in language, it is a grammatical investigation. In the Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus Wittgenstein offered a mathematical picture of language: presenting language as a calculus. Like a calculus, language was claimed to be governed by syntactic (...) rules: formation rules about the licit combination of names to form elementary propositions; formation rules about the licit combination of elementary propositions to make complex propositions; and finally, truth‐table rules, which enable us to identify logical truths and entailments. Logical grammar, for the young Wittgenstein, is only logical syntax and logical syntax can be determined without paying any attention to the meaning of the signs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 124.1 (2003) 153-156 [Access article in PDF] Gesine Manuwald, ed. Der Satiriker Lucilius und seine Zeit. Zetemata 110. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2001. 206 pp. Paper, fi49.90. In mid-February 2001 at the University of Freiburg, a symposium was held under the aegis of Professor Eckard Lefèvre on the theme "Lucilius, Identity, and Alterity." Moving with lightning speed, Gesine Manuwald edited fifteen of the papers given (...) there and had them ready in June so that Beck could publish them in record time. This is the swiftest production of the doings of such a symposium that I have come across. If only there had been some really new things to say about Lucilius, it would make this monograph invaluable. Unfortunately, no new fragments have appeared, and the identity of Lucilius remains shrouded in mystery for lack of new historical evidence. As for alterity, most of the participants in the project did not feel comfortable with addressing that aspect of Lucilius, probably again for lack of useful data on the satirist and his period.Nine of the fifteen papers come from the hands of students and faculty at the University of Freiburg. In addition, there are contributions from Johannes Christes of Berlin, C. J. Classen of Göttingen, Ursula Gärtner of Leipzig, Severin Kostner of Erlangen, Werner Krenkel of Rostock, and Eckart Olshausen of Stuttgart. All of the titles try to link Lucilius with a genre like epic, with a specific poet like Callimachus or Aristophanes, or with a cultural or historical phenomenon like the city of Rome or the times in which the poet lived. One essay alone addresses a specific satire, predictably the Trip to Sicily in Book 3, which provides enough surviving lines to allow a discussion of fifteen pages.Several of the essays illustrate the difficulty of putting a confident hand on the "identity" of Lucilius. Even the famous disclaimer of ambition to become a [End Page 153] publican in the new province of Asia, though firmly linked to Lucilius' name in its text, does not necessarily justify the conclusion that the poet is expressing personal pride as Manuwald claims. A pose is certainly struck, but what exactly is Lucilius proud of, and what does he propose instead? The statement could be the opening to his artistic creed as satirist, but it has other possibilities, e.g., the choice of an Epicurean existence or an attack on equestrian operators, and we need to advance every inference very tentatively. It is indeed quite possible that the lines came from a fictional dramatic situation.The first paper, by Ulrike Auhagen, deals with Lucilius and comedy, an important and difficult topic. In his early poems of the first edition, Lucilius wrote a number of scenes in comic meters. Before he completed that edition, he seems to have decided permanently against those meters, senarius and septenarius, and he confined himself to hexameters in Book 30, the last book of that edition. Did he also abandon the way he used the comic meters? That is, in his early satirical experiments, did he produce little comic vignettes on fictional situations, familiar in Plautus and Terence, or did he use comedy to make satiric commentary on the Rome of his day? If the former, which I had hoped Auhagen would consider, then we can infer the variety of the satura that the poet was exploring. If the latter, then Lucilius is already from his earliest works the hard-hitting moralist that Auhagen imagines, ready to turn any meter and any situation into an arena for his polemics. I would plead for more openness to alterity.Various papers deal with Lucilius' interest in other genres or writers. Thus, Andreas Bagordo downplays the connection with Callimachus, which Puelma Piwonka daringly argued. Bernhard Zimmermann considers Horace's apparent belief that Lucilius depended greatly on Aristophanes, and he puts it rightly into perspective. Manuwald shows how little the satirist admired the Greek and Roman tragedians, but she could have spent more time on the programmatic relevance of his disapproval: he was, after all, staking... (shrink)

Wittgenstein and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind aims to reassess the work of Wittgenstein in terms of its importance to contemporary debates surrounding the philosophy of mind.The first part of this study examines Wittgenstein in the context of current views on the human mind in relation to the body and behavior. The arguments confront the views of Quine and Dennett, as well as functionalism, eliminative materialism, and the current debate about consciousness. The essays that make up the second part focus on (...) a particular psychological concept, thinking, imagining, sensation, knowledge, and reason. This study takes a fresh look at this established thinker and demonstrates both the relevance and power of his arguments in the 21st century. (shrink)

For the last 25 years, human development has become part of official development discourses. It takes the normative position that the success of policies depends on whether they have expanded human flourishing, or expanded the 'freedoms' or 'capabilities' people have 'reason to value', as Amartya Sen would put it. It emphasises the importance of institutions to facilitate such expansion, and the agency of people to create such institutions. The ability of institutions to be conducive to human flourishing depends on the (...) nature of human interaction. When human interaction no longer has the flourishing of other persons as its aim, it can create structures which then constrain human agency. The article argues that the human development perspective could be enriched by theological insights such as structural sin and the contribution of religious narratives to public reasoning. It concentrates on the idea of justice of one biblical parable, and illustrates its argument with examples from the Argentine labour context. (shrink)

This paper argues that despite recent tendencies to minimize the differences between Posidonius and the Early Stoics, there are some important aspects of Stoic ethics in which Posidonius deviated from the orthodox doctrine. According to two passages in Diogenes Laertius, Posidonius counted health and wealth among the goods and held that virtue alone is insufficient for happiness. While Kidd in his commentary dismissed this report as spurious, there are good reasons to take Diogenes’ remarks seriously. Through a careful analysis of (...) the sources, in particular of Galen's De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, this article offers a new interpretation of Posidonius’ ethics. It sheds light on Posidonius’ theory of virtues and shows that Posidonius must have granted a special status to things like health and wealth even if he did not regard them as genuine goods. (shrink)

This chapter offers a brief sketch of the normativity of linguistic meaning and then considers the opposing view of semantic anti-normativism as defended by Gluer and Wickforss. The author distinguishes between three different types of obligation and argues that Gluer & Wickforss's position is based on a misconstrual of semantic normativity as a source of something like moral obligation, when in fact it produces only obligation of the third type.

The growing interest and major advances of the last decades in evolutionary developmental biology (EvoDevo) have led to the recognition of the incompleteness of the Modern Synthesis of evolutionary theory. Here we discuss how paleontology makes significant contributions to integrate evolution and development. First, extinct organisms often inform us about developmental processes by showing a combination of features unrecorded in living species. We illustrate this point using the vertebrate fossil record and studies relating bone ossification to life history traits. Second, (...) we discuss exceptionally preserved fossils that document rare ontogenetic sequences and illustrate this case with the patterns of heterochrony observed in Cambrian crustacean larvae preserved three-dimensionally. Third, most fossils potentially document the evolutionary patterns of allometry and modularity, as well as some of the (paleo)ecological factors that had influenced them. The temporal persistence of adaptive patterns in rodent evolution serves to address the importance of ecological constraints in evolution. Fourth, we discuss how the macroevolutionary patterns observed in the tetrapod limb, in the mammal molar proportions, and in the molluscan shell provide independent tests of the validity of morphogenetic models proposed on living species. Reciprocally, these macroevolutionary patterns often act as a source of inspiration to investigate the underlying rules of development, because, at the end, they are the patterns that the neo-Darwinian theory was unable to account for. (shrink)