Given the important role that business media play in corporate life, scarce attention has been paid to the role of media in the construction and popularization of corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this article, we understand media as a key infomediary and examine how the business press has framed and presented CSR over the last 10 years. Based on a content analysis of how CSR is presented in two English-language business newspapers with an international readership, we develop a framework for (...) understanding the role of business media setting the corporate CSR agenda. The results show that business media contribute to the construction of what CSR means in corporate practice by creating links between CSR and certain corporate activities, between CSR and arguments that strengthen the view of CSR as a business case, and between CSR and certain spokespersons. These links contribute to create a notion of what CSR stands for, what it means in practice, and why it is important that one should pay attention to. (shrink)

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has transgressed biomedical categories. According to Horton, it turned out to be a 'syndrome' that infected virtually all spheres of social life. The pandemic has created toxic social atmosphere highly unfavorable to clinical and clinic-ethical decision making. Constraints and pressures related to micro-, meso-, exo- and macro-environments framing doctors, nurses, and medical students in training were identified. These factors exacerbated moral distress (moral injury) amongst clinicians. In a joint Polish-Lithuanian project (IDUB 2020-2022) we examined predictors of moral (...) distress in pandemic clinical contexts. A survey-based, real-time, correlational and comparative study was conducted in Poland and Lithuania after the first year of pandemic with N=227 participants. Unexpected differences on regular and pandemic-type moral distress levels were found between the two national samples. Polish participants showed significantly higher moral distress levels than their Lithuanian counterparts. The following article discusses these findings and recommends the reinforcement of resilient medical decision making. (shrink)

This book analyzes the exile ontology of Spanish philosopher María Zambrano. Karolina Enquist Källgren connects Zambrano’s lived exile and political engagement with the Spanish Civil War to her poetic reason, and argues that Zambrano developed a theory of expressive subjectivity that combined embodiment with the expressive creativity of the human mind. The analysis of recurring literary figures and concepts—such as new materialism, the confession, image, the ruin, the heart, and awakening— show how a comprehensive argument runs as a thread (...) through her works. Further, this book situates Zambrano’s thought in a larger European philosophical context by showing how Zambrano’s poetic reason was directly related to her unconventional exile readings of Martin Heidegger, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and Xavier Zubiri, among others. (shrink)

ABSTRACTZambrano is well-known for her critique of the ideal subject, as well as of philosophy and ‘Western’ reason. Despite this critique, notions like the individual and reason in her works has not been thoroughly analysed. Enquist Källgren argues that Zambrano’s texts contains a comprehensive theory of subjectivity. It is shown that Zambrano’s notion of subjectivity presupposes a structure that positions the human being in a modal relation to her surroundings. The human being can be conceived of as a structure of (...) transcendent and transcendental positions in which the individual is the product of an expressive performativity. Zambrano’s theory of subjectivity can be read as an engagement with the thinking of both Aristotle and Kant, placing subjectivity in the tension between embodiment and transcendental capacities. It is concluded that Zambrano’s theory of subjectivity is in fact a modal ontology describing the condition of possibility of human existence. In addition, it is concluded that this modal ontology has important ethical implications since it presupposes the presence of an ‘other’ towards which expressive performativity is directed. (shrink)

El exilio es a la vez una experiencia autobiográfico y tema de reflexión en la obra de María Zambrano. En este artículo propongo una lectura de las figuras del exilio y del exiliado como Gedankenexperiment – un razonar hipotético e imaginario sobre un caso concreto - que permite a la autora desarrollar un argumento filosófico pero dentro del marco del lenguaje figurativo. Esta manera de interpretar las figuras mencionadas me permite trazar la circulación de figuras y la influencia de Zambrano (...) en el desarrollo de la filosofía bio-política italiana, sobre todo en la autora Adriana Cavarero. Al nivel del argumento filosófico la lectura me permite ver como Zambrano y Cavarero entienden al exilio y el exiliado como un límite interior a la patria y las conclusiones éticas a las que llegan a partir de esta idea. Concluyo que la manera de trabajar con figuras literarias es una estrategia de estilo consciente que intenta hacer efectivo la postura ética producida en la elaboración sobre el exilio. (shrink)

This paper compares the concept of the heart in the works of Max Scheler and María Zambrano. Both authors use the heart as a metaphor for distinct human affective phenomena that have a central anthropological, epistemological, and ontological significance. The comparison between authors’ use of the metaphor is organised around three main topics: the order of the heart; the idea of a primordial feeling and its place in the affective life; and the primacy of love in relation to negative affective (...) attitudes. Our aim is twofold: to investigate the influence of Scheler on Zambrano’s thought and to demonstrate how Scheler’s phenomenology of affectivity transformed in Spanish philosophy and, in particular, in Zambrano’s work. After introducing the topic (section 1), the paper focuses on Scheler’s model of affectivity (section 2), presents an overview of Scheler’s reception in Spain focusing on Zambrano’s knowledge of his works (section 3), and examines Zambrano’s notion of the heart tracing parallelisms in Scheler’s works (section 4). The paper concludes with a discussion on Zambrano’s extension and transformation of the metaphor of the heart in the context of Spanish philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper compares the concept of the heart in the works of Max Scheler and María Zambrano. Both authors use the heart as a metaphor for distinct human affective phenomena that have a central anthropological, epistemological, and ontological significance. The comparison between authors’ use of the metaphor is organised around three main topics: the order of the heart; the idea of a primordial feeling and its place in the affective life; and the primacy of love in relation to negative (...) affective attitudes. Our aim is twofold: to investigate the influence of Scheler on Zambrano’s thought and to demonstrate how Scheler’s phenomenology of affectivity transformed in Spanish philosophy and, in particular, in Zambrano’s work. After introducing the topic, the paper focuses on Scheler’s model of affectivity, presents an overview of Scheler’s reception in Spain focusing on Zambrano’s knowledge of his works, and examines Zambrano’s notion of the heart tracing parallelisms in Scheler’s works. The paper concludes with a discussion on Zambrano’s extension and transformation of the metaphor of the heart in the context of Spanish philosophy. (shrink)

The article proposes a new solution to the long-standing problem of the universality of essences in Spinoza's ontology. It argues that, according to Spinoza, particular things in nature possess unique essences, but that these essences coexist with more general, mind-dependent species-essences, constructed by finite minds on the basis of similarities that obtain among the properties of formally-real particulars. This account provides the best fit both with the textual evidence and with Spinoza's other metaphysical and epistemological commitments. The article offers new (...) readings of how Spinoza understands not just the nature of essence, but also the nature of being, reason, striving, definitions, and different kinds of knowledge. (shrink)

According to the Principle of Conditional Non-Contradiction (CNC), conditionals of the form “If p, q” and “If p, not q” cannot both be true, unless p is inconsistent. This principle is widely regarded as an adequacy constraint on any semantics that attributes truth conditions to conditionals. Gibbard has presented an example of a pair of conditionals that, in the context he describes, appear to violate CNC. He concluded from this that conditionals lack truth conditions. We argue that this conclusion is (...) rash by proposing a new diagnosis of what is going on in Gibbard’s argument. We also provide empirical evidence in support of our proposal. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 2 Seiten: 196-233.

The experimental philosophy of law is a recent movement that aims to inform traditional debates in jurisprudence by conducting empirical research. This paper introduces and provides a systematic overview of the main lines of research in this field. It also covers the most important debates in the literature regarding the implications of these findings for the philosophy and theory of law. It argues that three challenges arise when addressing (old) legal-philosophical questions in (new) experimental ways by drawing normative implications from (...) empirical data: such implications are value-driven, depend on explanations of empirical findings and vary across legal systems. (shrink)

The paper examines a relatively neglected element of Spinoza's theory of mind-body relations: the intentional relation between human minds and bodies, which for Spinoza constitutes their “union”. Prima facie textual evidence suggests, and many readers agree, that because for Spinoza human minds are essentially ideas of bodies, Spinoza is also committed to an ontological and explanatory dependence of certain properties of human minds on properties of bodies, and thus to a version of materialism. The paper argues that such dependence would (...) contradict Spinoza's key epistemological commitments, including the explanatory closure of mental and physical realms, and Spinoza’s claim that all knowledge is knowledge of a thing's causes. The paper argues that Spinoza's dual-reality theory of representation allows us to interpret the intentional relation between human minds and bodies in a way that does not commit Spinoza to a problematic dependence of minds on bodies. This is possible if we take Spinoza's references to properties of bodies in his account of the human mind as references to objectively real bodies, that is as references to the immanent representational content of human minds. (shrink)

The Lexicon cuts through the daunting profusion of scholarship on Spinoza by supplying compact entries that contextualize Spinoza's thought, elucidate crucial concepts, and point to the relevant scholarly debates and studies. A vital resource for novices and experts alike seeking to expand their knowledge of Spinoza.

The article explores the idea that according to Spinoza finite thought and substantial thought represent reality in different ways. It challenges “acosmic” readings of Spinoza's metaphysics, put forth by readers like Hegel, according to which only an infinite, undifferentiated substance genuinely exists, and all representations of finite things are illusory. Such representations essentially involve negation with respect to a more general kind. The article shows that several common responses to the charge of acosmism fail. It then argues that we must (...) distinguish the well-founded ideality of representations of finite things from mere illusoriness, insofar as for Spinoza we can have true knowledge of what is known only abstractly. Finite things can be seen as well-founded beings of reason. The article also proposes that within Spinoza's framework it is possible to represent a finite thing without drawing on representations of mind-dependent entities. (shrink)

Reasoning with conditionals is central to everyday life, yet there is long-standing disagreement about the meaning of the conditional. One example is the puzzle of so-called missing-link conditionals such as "if raccoons have no wings, they cannot breathe under water." Their oddity may be taken to show that conditionals require a connection between antecedent ("raccoons have no wings") and consequent ("they cannot breathe under water"), yet most accounts of conditionals attribute the oddity to natural language pragmatics. We present an experimental (...) study disentangling the pragmatic requirement of discourse coherence from a stronger notion of connection: probabilistic relevance. Results indicate that mere discourse coherence is not enough to make conditionals assertable. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyze technical and internal aspects of one particular type of human moral enhancement, i.e. enhancement of moral motivation via direct emotion modulation. More precisely, it challenges the assumption that modifying certain emotions will have the results desired by the advocates of this theory. It is argued that neuropsychological understanding of the role and function of emotions, as well as of underlying cognitive mechanisms, might be relevant for the discussion about biomedical enhancement of moral capacities. Moreover, typical (...) claims about direct emotion modulation seem to be contradicted, or at least seriously challenged, by available neuroscientific data. Particular attention is paid to the theory that emotions are evolved and functionally specialized programs whose task is to coordinate other adaptive mechanisms of human psychology in order to promote one’s fitness. If this view of emotions is plausible, it can be argued that several difficulties for moral bioenhancement theory ensue. Neuroscientific and evolutionary-psychological perspective seem to indicate that emotions don’t fulfill necessary requirements to serve as the vehicles of moral enhancement and it should, therefore, take into account role and function of entire cognitive modules associated with moral decision-making. (shrink)

A pertinent concern in the human enhancement debate is that human enhancement technologies (HET) are intrinsically bad and, hence, morally impermissible. This article evaluates the related claims about the intrinsic badness of HET by looking into philosophical theories of intrinsic value. It investigates how well-established conceptions of intrinsic value map onto typical bioconservative arguments about HET's intrinsic badness. Three predominant variants of these arguments are explored and found wanting: (i) HET are intrinsically bad owing to their unnaturalness; (ii) the pursuit (...) of HET reveals intrinsically bad character (“the desire for mastery”); and (iii) HET will necessarily undermine intrinsically valuable things (e.g., human dignity). My analysis shows that the debate on intrinsic value places serious constraints on claims about the intrinsic badness of HET. More specifically, the analysis shows that bioconservative arguments are, for the most part, inconsistent, misconceived, and overly speculative. Enhancement interventions cannot be bearers of intrinsic value on any of its plausible understandings, and, even if we could grant such a possibility, there are no compelling reasons to presume that the intrinsic value of HET would be necessarily negative. As a result, claims regarding their moral impermissibility are unwarranted. (shrink)

The paper offers a new account of Spinoza's conception of “substance”, the fundamental building block of reality. It shows that it can be demonstrated apriori within Spinoza's metaphysical framework that (i) contrary to Idealist readings, for Spinoza there can be no substance that is not determined or modified by some other entity produced by substance; and that (ii) there can be no substance (and hence no being) that is not a thinking substance.

When selecting between applicants for a job, when and how should we take into account the reactions that they elicit from others? On one hand, applicants’ “reaction qualifications” often speak to their merit, in which case we seem required to consider them. On the other hand, others’ reactions are often rooted in prejudicial attitudes, in which case considering reaction qualifications can make the hiring process prejudicial. According to a popular view, we should refrain from considering reaction qualifications just in case (...) there are weighty moral reasons against doing so. I argue that this morality-based approach fails. Instead, we should refrain from considering reaction qualifications just in case considering them would render a selection procedure non-transparent or discriminatory. If consideration of a reaction qualification would have either effect, the reaction qualification does not confer merit and so should not be considered by selectors. (shrink)

The discussion about human enhancement technologies has primarily focused on exchanging views about the dangers and benefits of these interventions. However, the debate could benefit from a systematic attempt to move beyond pro et contra exchange. Thus, in this paper, I analyze key issues in the human enhancement debate, and I outline a set of methodological guidelines that could help to progress future research. I propose that we should pay special attention to the following conditions: (i) whether a particular enhancement (...) project is plausibly coherent, feasible, and effective; (ii) whether it conflicts with fundamental moral values and norms; and (iii) whether it is compatible with or promotes socio-political goals of equality and justice. This approach should help us minimize normative ambiguity and facilitate the moral assessment of different enhancements and their particular applications. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

The emotion of disgust is suggested to be an adaptation that evolved to keep us away from sources of infection. Therefore, individuals from populations with greater pathogen stress should have a greater disgust sensitivity. However, current evidence for a positive relationship between disgust sensitivity and the intensity of infectious diseases in the environment is limited. We tested whether disgust and contamination sensitivity changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Disgust was assessed in 984 women in 2017 and 633 women in (...) 2020 by a set of photographs depicting sources of infection and Pathogen and Moral of Three-Domain Disgust Scale. Further, contamination sensitivity among participants in two waves was measured by Contamination Obsessions and Washing Compulsions Subscale of Padua Inventory. State anxiety was measured with the Polish adaptation of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory only during the second wave of data collection. Women from the COVID-19 pandemic group assessed the photographs depicting sources of infection as more disgusting, scoring higher on Padua Inventory, but lower on Moral Disgust Domain as compared to women from before the pandemic. In addition, anxiety levels during pandemic positively correlated with scores from Pathogen Disgust Domain, Padua Inventory, and the ratings of the photographs. The participants of the study scored higher in state anxiety than the norms determined for the Polish population. Summarizing, we present evidence for differences in individual levels of disgust sensitivity in relation to pathogen stress, supporting the idea that disgust evolved to serve as protection from pathogens. (shrink)

In _Suppose and Tell_, Williamson makes a new case for the material conditional account. He tries to explain away apparently countervailing data by arguing that these have been misinterpreted because researchers have overlooked the role of heuristics in the processing of conditionals. Cases involving the receipt of apparently conflicting conditionals play an important dialectical role in Williamson’s book: they are supposed to provide evidence for the material conditional account as well as for the defeasibility of a key procedure underlying our (...) everyday assessments of conditionals. We argue that they can serve neither of these purposes and that Williamson overestimates the reach of heuristics. We specifically challenge Williamson’s assumption that, in the kind of cases centrally at issue in his book, the recipient of conflicting conditionals will typically accept those at face value, even granting Williamson that conditionals can be freely passed among speakers under normal conditions of testimony. (shrink)

The ongoing debate about moral bioenhancement has been exceptionally stimulating, but it is defined by extreme polarization and lack of consensus about any relevant aspect of MBE. This article reviews the discussion on MBE, showing that a lack of consensus about enhancements’ desirable features and the constant development of the debate calls for a more rigorous ethical analysis. I identify a list of factors that may be of crucial importance for illuminating the matters of moral permissibility in the MBE debate (...) and which could help us move beyond the current lack of consensus. More precisely, I propose three important theoretical and normative standards that MBE should satisfy if we wish to mitigate the concerns about its utter impermissibility. Systematically assessing MBE interventions across the presented categories should provide valuable conclusions about its theoretical soundness and feasibility, its compatibility with fundamental moral norms, and its compatibility with or facilitation of socio-political goals of equality and justice. (shrink)

Moral bioenhancement (MBE) is often associated with a consequentialist, especially utilitarian, framework, owing to its capacity to prevent great harm and motivate acts in accordance with basic moral principles such us universal impartial altruism or benevolence. However, it remains unclear whether we could de facto justify MBE on utilitarian grounds. This article examines whether there is a plausible utilitarian case for MBE and what the obstacles for justifying MBE on utilitarian grounds could be. More specifically, it explores the relationship between (...) MBE and basic utilitarian principles, as well as its effects on utilitarian moral judgment. It seems that MBE could modify moral agents in ways that would accord with the main utilitarian demands and facilitate the adoption and realization of utilitarian prescriptions. Although MBE would, in principle, create preconditions for achieving utilitarian ends, I argue that there are certain limits to this claim. I identify and elaborate several ways in which MBE could undermine utilitarian moral judgment. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, ethical challenges related to robotics technologies have gained increasing interest among different research and non-academic communities, in particular through the field of roboethics. While the reasons to address roboethics are clear, why not to engage with ethics needs to be better understood. This paper focuses on a limited or lacking engagement with ethics that takes place within some parts of the robotics community and its implications for the conceptualisation of the human being. The underlying assumption (...) is that the term ‘ethical’ essentially means ‘human’. Thus, this paper discusses a working hypothesis according to which by avoiding to engage with roboethics, roboticists contribute to the tacit dehumanisation process emerging in and outside of robotics. An alternative approach includes ‘lived ethics’ which involves not only incorporating formal ethical approaches into the roboticists’ work but also ‘being’ ethical and actually engaging with ethical reflection and practice. (shrink)

Spinoza claims both that a thing’s essence is identical to power, and that emotions are fundamentally variations in this power. The conjunction of these two theses creates difficulties for his metaphysics and ethics alike. The three main worries concern the coherence of Spinoza’s accounts of essence, diachronic identity, and emotional “bondage,” and put in question his ability to derive ethical and psychological doctrines from his metaphysical claims. In response to these difficulties, this paper offers a new interpretation of Spinoza’s account (...) of affects and his doctrine of the identity of power and essence. It shows that what is fundamental to his ontology of affects is the relation of modification or determination, a relation central to his ontology more generally. The paper argues that we cannot simply identify power and essence but should instead take affects to modify or determine essences as particular exercises of power (particular desires, appetites, and volitions). That is, Spinozistic essences should be viewed as intrinsically determinable, with affects supplying the determinations, and as consisting not in rigid sets of determinate properties, but in ranges of variable properties. (shrink)

Novel precision oncology trial designs, such as basket and umbrella trials, are designed to test new anticancer agents in more effective and affordable ways. However, they present some ethical concerns referred to scientific validity, risk-benefit balance and informed consent. Our aim is to discuss these issues in basket and umbrella trials, giving examples of two ongoing cancer trials: NCI-MATCH (National Cancer Institute – Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice) and Lung-MAP (Lung Cancer Master Protocol) study. We discuss three ethical requirements for (...) clinical trials which may be challenged in basket and umbrella trial designs. Firstly, we consider scientific validity. Thanks to the new trial designs, patients with rare malignancies have the opportunity to be enrolled and benefit from the trial, but due to insufficient accrual, the trial may generate clinically insignificant findings. Inadequate sample size in study arms and the use of surrogate endpoints may result in a drug approval without confirmed efficacy. Moreover, complexity, limited quality and availability of tumor samples may not only introduce bias and result in unreliable and unrepresentative findings, but also can potentially harm patients and assign them to an inappropriate therapy arm. Secondly, we refer to benefits and risks. Novel clinical trials can gain important knowledge on the variety of tumors, which can be used in future trials to develop effective therapies. However, they offer limited direct benefits to patients. All potential participants must wait about 2 weeks for the results of the genetic screening, which may be stressful and produce anxiety. The enrollment of patients whose tumors harbor multiple mutations in treatments matching a single mutation may be controversial. As to informed consent – the third requirement we discuss, the excessive use of phrases like “personalized medicine”, “tailored therapy” or “precision oncology” might be misleading and cause personal convictions that the study protocol is designed to fulfill the individual health-related needs of participants. We suggest that further approaches should be implemented to enhance scientific validity, reduce misunderstandings and risks, thus maximizing the benefits to society and to trial participants. (shrink)

Commentators standardly ascribe to Spinoza a belief in an exceptionless conceptual closure of mental and physical realms: no intention can allow us to understand a bodily movement, no bodily injury can make intelligible a sensation of pain. This counterintuitive doctrine, most often now referred to as Spinoza's 'attribute barrier', has weighty repercussions for his views on intelligibility, nature of the mind, identity, and causality. I argue against the standard reading of the doctrine, by showing that it produces an inconsistent epistemological (...) picture, contradicting Spinoza's theory of mind and his commitment to universal intelligibility. The alternative account I propose is also philosophically more compelling and plausible as an account of thought in its essential intentionality. (shrink)

The problem of universals is one of the oldest problems in philosophy. One of the oddities of Spinoza's view of universals is that he endorses both Realism and Nominalism. An analogous Realist account can be given for all thinking things: all ideas, really do have something in common, intrinsically, constitutively, and mind‐independently: namely, thought as a determinable, qualitative, essential substantial nature. Spinoza's accounts of the nature of the human mind and of human emotions both can be read as accounts of (...) such relative common properties. Spinoza's most detailed case study of a mind‐dependent universal whose idea is constructed through abstraction and comparison can be found in his account of the will. Spinoza also often implies that ideas of universals and abstractions have a lower epistemic value than thought that deals with particulars alone. (shrink)

The paper is an attempt to consider the issue that so far has not been discussed frequently in the Polish philological current. It focuses on the endings of 18 selected articles in the field of literary studies. Authors of textbooks on academic discourse argue that it is the ending that plays a fundamental role in the scientific discourse as a concluding, summarising, and potentially memorable part. This approach to a conclusion is often shared by scholars themselves, who choose different strategies (...) with regard to endings of their articles. When studying articles published in the period of 2015‒2019, we identified about 15 different ending strategies, e.g. an apologia for a literary work selected by an author, suggestions for further research possibilities, an attractive punch line, and an quotation from another paper. As the analysis reveals, the conclusion of an academic article is not only a place for introducing conventional rhetorical figures; it also becomes the researchers’ contribution to the understanding of the role ascribed by literary-studies scholars to their own scientific practice. (shrink)

This essay is about the role of visual surveillance technologies in the policing of the external borders of the European Union. Based on an analysis of documents published by EU institutions and independent organizations, I argue that these technological innovations fundamentally alter the nature of national borders. I discuss how new technologies of vision are deployed to transcend the physical limits of territories. In the last twenty years, EU member states and institutions have increasingly relied on various forms of remote (...) tracking, including the use of drones for the purposes of monitoring frontier zones. In combination with other facets of the EU border management regime, these technologies coalesce into a system of governance that has enabled intervention into neighboring territories and territorial waters of other states to track and target migrants for interception in the “prefrontier.” For jurisdictional reasons, this practice effectively precludes the enforcement of legal human rights obligations, which European states might otherwise have with regard to these persons. This article argues that this technologically mediated expansion of vision has become a key feature of post–cold war governance of borders in Europe. The concept of transterritory is proposed to capture its effects. (shrink)

Purpose: The main aim of the research was to analyse aggression dimensions among athletes practising martial arts and combat sports.Material and Methods: There were 219 respondents. The Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire in the Polish adaptation by Siekierka was applied.Results: Martial arts apprentices turned out to present a statistically significantly lower level of hostility and of the general aggression index than combat sports athletes. It turned out that lower level of aggression was noted in female participants, verbal aggression, hostility, and (...) the general aggression index. Analysis revealed that the training experience and the training rank did not differentiated the level of the respondents' particular aggression dimensions.Conclusions: It would be advisable to perform parallel analyses in other areas of Poland and take into account the respondents' education and place of residence. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyse a finding by Riggs and colleagues that there is a close connection between people’s ability to reason with counterfactual conditionals and their capacity to attribute false beliefs to others. The result indicates that both processes may be governed by one cognitive mechanism, though false belief attribution seems to be slightly more cognitively demanding. Given that the common denominator for both processes is suggested to be a form of the Ramsey test, I investigate whether Stalnaker’s semantic (...) theory of conditionals, which was inspired by the Ramsey test, may provide the basis for a psychologically plausible model of belief ascription. The analysis I propose will shed some new light on the developmental discrepancy between counterfactual reasoning and false belief ascription. (shrink)

The book discusses a democratic legitimation for modern law. Debates on Europeanisation are taken into account. Ronald Dworkin's, Neil MacCormick's and Jürgen Habermas's standpoints on relations between the law and the public sphere are investigated. Concepts of self-reflexive polity, self-constitutionalisation, constitutional patriotism are analysed.

This paper offers a new interpretation of Spinoza's doctrine of parallelism. It argues Spinoza reinterprets the ancient doctrine of metaphysical sympathy among ostensibly disconnected and distant beings in terms of fully intelligible relations of 1) identity between formal and objective reality, and in terms of 2) "real identity," grounded in Spinoza's substance-monism. Finally, the paper argues against the standard reading of mind-body pairs as "numerically identical".

Decision theorists tend to treat indicative conditionals with reservation, because they can easily lead a deliberating agent astray. However, many indicatives can be very helpful in contexts of deliberation, so denying them all a role in such contexts seems to be overkill. We show that a recently revived inferential view on conditionals provides a straightforward explanation of why some indicatives are unassertable in contexts of deliberation and hints at a way of telling "deliberationally useless" and "deliberationally useful" conditionals apart.

With the limited initial availability of COVID-19 vaccines in the first months of 2021, decision-makers had to determine the order in which different groups were prioritized. Our aim was to find out what normative approaches to the allocation of scarce preventive resources were embedded in the national COVID-19 vaccination schedules. We systematically reviewed and compared prioritization regulations in 27 members of the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Israel. We differentiated between two types of priority categories: groups that have increased (...) infection fatality rate (IFR) compared to the average for the general population and groups chosen because their members experience increased risk of being infected (ROI). Our findings show a clear trend: all researched schedules prioritized criteria referring to IFR (being over 65 years old and coexisting health conditions) over the ROI criteria (eg occupation and housing conditions). This is surprising since, in the context of treatment, it is common and justifiable to adopt different allocation principles (eg introducing a saving more life-year approach or prioritizing younger patients). We discuss how utilitarian, prioritarian, and egalitarian principles can be applied to interpret normative differences between the allocation of curative and preventive interventions. (shrink)

We live in an era when increasing numbers of babies are conceived through assisted reproduction technologies (ART). Using a comprehensive approach, the present research seeks to contribute to the understanding of gender differences in experiencing and coping with infertility, and in dealing with ART treatment. Our sample consisted of 10 heterosexual couples aged 24 to 43 and the data were collected through semi-structured interviews. In the studied sample, gender differences existed not only in experiences of infertility, but also in understanding (...) it, and in dealing with ART treatment. Responses to stress caused by infertility were stronger in women and they also perceived this stress more intensely than men. For women the central aspect of infertility was the desire for a child, while for men it was perceived more as a socially imposed obligation to fulfill the male role. (shrink)