(1997). Partnership intelligence and dominator intelligence: Their social roots, patterns, and consequences. World Futures: Vol. 49, The Dialatic of Evolution: Essays in Honor of David Loye, pp. 39-63.

In an increasingly globalized world, empathy has been identified as a core competency of future global citizens and thus as an important skill to be fostered in global citizenship education (GCE). Despite this, however, what empathy is, and how it can play the pivotal role often claimed for it in the literature, have not been adequately explored. Here, Eirik Risberg argues that, pace the common conception of empathy, empathy should not be construed narrowly, as an affective concept, but broadly, as (...) a cognitive and epistemic concept. Drawing on recent work in philosophy and psychology, Risberg explores a suggestion that construes empathy as a complex self-directed perspective-taking of the situation of another. While this may constitute a conception of empathy that is more modest than the most ardent proponents of empathy would like, it has the benefit of avoiding the objections that have been leveled against empathy as a moral concept and thus allows us to maintain that empathy is a valuable skill to be cultivated in educating global citizens for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Counterfactual reasoning -- envisioning hypothetical scenarios, or possible worlds, where some circumstances are different from what (f)actually occurred (counter-to-fact) -- is ubiquitous in human cognition. Conventionally, counterfactually-altered circumstances have been treated as "small miracles" that locally violate the laws of nature while sharing the same initial conditions. In Pearl's structural causal model (SCM) framework this is made mathematically rigorous via interventions that modify the causal laws while the values of exogenous variables are shared. In recent years, however, this purely interventionist (...) account of counterfactuals has increasingly come under scrutiny from both philosophers and psychologists. Instead, they suggest a backtracking account of counterfactuals, according to which the causal laws remain unchanged in the counterfactual world; differences to the factual world are instead "backtracked" to altered initial conditions (exogenous variables). In the present work, we explore and formalise this alternative mode of counterfactual reasoning within the SCM framework. Despite ample evidence that humans backtrack, the present work constitutes, to the best of our knowledge, the first general account and algorithmisation of backtracking counterfactuals. We discuss our backtracking semantics in the context of related literature and draw connections to recent developments in explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). (shrink)

First ed. published in 1846 under the title: Neue Politik.

Hemiparetic stroke in adulthood often results in the grouped movement pattern of the upper extremity flexion synergy thought to arise from an increased reliance on cortico-reticulospinal pathways due to a loss of lateral corticospinal projections. It is well-established that the flexion synergy induces reaching constraints in individuals with adult-onset hemiplegia. The expression of the flexion synergy in individuals with brain injuries onset earlier in the lifespan is currently unknown. An early unilateral brain injury occurring prior to six months post full-term (...) may preserve corticospinal projections which can be used for independent joint control and thus minimizing the expression of the flexion synergy. This study uses kinematics of a ballistic reaching task to evaluate the expression of the flexion synergy in individuals with pediatric-onset hemiplegia (PH) ages six to seventeen years. Fifteen individuals with brain injuries before birth (n = 8) and around full-term (n = 7) and nine age-matched controls with no known neurological impairment completed a set of reaches in an admittance controlled robotic device. Descending drive, and the possible expression of the upper extremity flexion snergy, was modulated by increasing shoulder abduction loading. Individuals with early PH achieved lower peak velocities when reaching with the paretic arm compared to controls however no differences in reaching distance were found between groups. Relative maintenance in reaching seen in individuals with early brain injuries highlights minimal expression of the flexion synergy. We interpret this conservation of independent control of the paretic shoulder and elbow as the use of more direct corticospinal projections instead of indirect cortico-reticulospinal pathways used in individuals with adult-onset hemiplegia. (shrink)

An attempt to present a classification under which all the law can be brought into scientific arrangement.

This chapter looks for a new understanding of the picture of a “projection”; and indeed the example of river names suggests a new way of speaking of projections. The considerations Wittgenstein discusses here indicate that the imagination (projection) is intertwined with calculation and that this should be considered a characteristic feature of natural languages: agreement about the success of the ongoing shared activities demands at every step the ability to project, to transfer – it demands creative imagination. Theoretically, an insight (...) into the workings of our language is all too often denied us because it is blocked by traditional pictures and prejudices. That is why philosophy plays such a decisive, critical role in its apparently quite conservative “mere description”: because it must point out how to distinguish those cases in which language “works properly” from those in which it leads us astray by “going on holiday”. (shrink)

Wittgenstein distinguishes two areas of what he calls the “use” of a word. First, there is the application of a word in the construction of a sentence, which he calls the “surface grammar.” Second, there is a usage that goes beyond the merely verbal part of language games, the rules governing which he terms “depth grammar.” These latter rules constitute what the preliminary work for the Investigations still referred to as “logical form.” To spell out Wittgenstein's analogy a little, he (...) must mean that, just as we are accustomed to saying the alphabet aloud in a certain way, so too are we familiar with the forms of expression of our language, for example with the subject predicate form. One became familiar with the forms in the course of originally learning how to use them ‐ that is, in learning certain ways of forming linguistic complexes at the level of content. (shrink)

Scientists, engineers, and healthcare professionals are currently developing a variety of new devices under the category of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Current and future applications are both medical/assistive (e.g., for communication) and non-medical (e.g., for gaming). This array of possibilities comes with ethical challenges for all stakeholders. As a result, BCIs have been an object of both hope and concern in various media. We argue that these conflicting sentiments can be productively understood in terms of personhood, specifically the impact of BCIs (...) on what it means to be a person and to be recognized as such by others. To understand the dynamics of personhood in the context of BCI use and investigate whether ethical guidance is required, a meeting entitled "BCIs and Personhood: A Deliberative Workshop" was held in May 2018. In this article, we describe how BCIs raise important questions about personhood and propose recommendations for BCI development and governance. (shrink)

Die wirtschaftliche und soziale Bedeutung der Juden im Mittelalter.--John Spencer's Erklärung der biblischen Gesetze in ihrer Beziehung zu Maimonides.--Max Webers Soziologie des antiken Judentums.--Zu Gabirols allegorischer Deutung der Erzählung vom Paradies.--Das Problem der Willensfreiheit bei Ḥasdai Crescas und den islamschen Aristotelikern.--Religion und Wissenschaft im mittelalterlichen und im modernen Denken.--Zur Kritik der Offenbarungsreligion in der islamischen und jüdischen Philosophie.--[Le-ḥeḳer ha-meḳorot shel Sefer ha-ʻiḳarim].--Die Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums.--Die religiösen Motive in der Philosophie des Maimonides.--Das Problem der Kontingenz in der Philosophie (...) des Maimonides.--Die Normierung des Glaubensinhalts im Judentum.--Hermann Cohens Ethik. (shrink)

Liebe Grete Herrmann, besten Dank für Ihren Brief vom 19.5! Auch ich freue mich, Sie auf dem Pariser Kongreß zu sehen; wahrscheinlich werde ich auch an der vorangehenden Positivistentagung teilnehmen, also schon am 29.7. in Paris sein. Es interessiert mich, diese antimetaphysischen Metaphysiker einmal aus der Nähe zu beobachten. Ich werde sehen, es so einzurichten, daß ich eventuell auch nach dem Hauptkongreß noch einige Tage in Paris sein kann, um die von Ihnen angeregten Diskussionen mitzuführen. Jedenfalls hoffe ich auf einige (...) gründliche Gespräche mit Ihnen. (shrink)

Morality is often thought of as non-rational or sub-rational. In Moral Notions, first published in 1967, Julius Kovesi argues that the rationality of morality is built into the way we construct moral concepts. In showing this he also resolves the old Humean conundrum of the relation between 'facts' and 'values'. And he puts forward a method of reasoning that might make 'applied ethics' (at present largely a hodge-podge of opinions) into a constructive discipline. Kovesi's general theory of concepts - (...) important in its own right - is indebted to his interpretation of Plato, and his three papers on Plato, first published here, explain this debt. This new edition of Moral Notions also includes a foreward by Philippa Foot, a biography of the author, and a substantial afterword in which the editors, Robert Ewin and Alan Tapper, explain the signficance of Kovesi's work. (shrink)