It is often argued that there are no practical reasons for belief because we could not believe for such reasons. A recent reply by pragmatists is that we can often believe for practical reasons because we can often cause our beliefs for practical reasons. This paper reveals the limits of this recently popular strategy for defending pragmatism, and thereby reshapes the dialectical options for pragmatism. I argue that the strategy presupposes that reasons for being in non-intentional states are not reducible (...) to reasons to act. Pragmatists who want to preserve a motivational constraint on reasons therefore have exactly two options: either arguing that there are irreducible reasons for being in non-intentional states ; or arguing that we can believe directly for practical reasons. I argue that the prospects for the former option are dim because irreducible reasons to be in states are hard to square with the motivational constraint on reasons. Returning to the more traditional route of arguing for pragmatism by defending a version of doxastic voluntarism therefore seems to be the more promising way for pragmatists to go. (shrink)

The author defends nonconceptualism, the claim that perceptual experience is nonconceptual and has nonconceptual content. Continuing the heated and complex debate surrounding this topic over the past two decades, she offers a sustained defense of a novel version of the view, Modest Nonconceptualism, and provides a systematic overview of some of the central controversies in the debate. -/- An explication of the notion of nonconceptual content and a distinction between nonconceptualist views of different strengths starts off the volume, then the (...) author goes on to defend participants in the debate over nonconceptual content against the allegation that their failure to distinguish between a state view and a content view of (non)conceptualism leads to fatal problems for their views. Next, she makes a case for nonconceptualism by refining some of the central arguments for the view, such as the arguments from fineness of grain, from contradictory contents, from animal and infant perception, and from concept acquisition. Then, two central objections against nonconceptualism are rebutted in a novel way: the epistemological objection and the objection from objectivity. -/- Modest Nonconceptualism allows for perceptual experiences to involve some conceptual elements. It emphasizes the relevance of concept employment for an understanding of conceptual and nonconceptual mental states and identifies the nonconceptual content of experience with scenario content. It insists on the possibility of genuine content-bearing perceptual experience without concept possession and is thus in line with the Autonomy Thesis. Finally, it includes an account of perceptual justification that relies on the external contents of experience and belief, yet is compatible with epistemological internalism. -/- . (shrink)

Humans are normative beings through and through. This capacity for normativity lies at the core of uniquely human forms of understanding and regulating socio-cultural group life. Plausibly, therefore, the hominin lineage evolved specialized social-cognitive, motivational, and affective abilities that helped create, transmit, preserve, and amend shared social practices. In turn, these shared normative attitudes and practices shaped subsequent human phylogeny, constituted new forms of group life, and hence structured human ontogeny, too. An essential aspect of human ontogeny is therefore its (...) reciprocal nature regarding normativity. This chapter reviews recent evidence from developmental psychology suggesting that, from early on, human children take a normative attitude toward others’ conduct in social interactions, and thus a collectivistic and impersonal perspective on norms. We discuss to what extent our closest living primate relatives lack normative attitudes and therefore live in a non-normative socio-causal world structured by individual preferences, power relationships, and regularities. (shrink)

Peirce is best known as the founder of pragmatism, but his dissatisfaction with how others understood and appropriated it prompted him to rename his own doctrine “pragmaticism” and to compose several variants of his original maxim defining it, as well as numerous restatements and elaborations. This paper presents an extensive selection of such formulations, followed by analysis and commentary demonstrating that for Peirce the ultimate meaning of an intellectual concept is properly expressed as a conditional proposition about the deliberate, self-controlled (...) conduct of its interpreters, not the law-governed behavior of its object. (shrink)

This paper maintains that objectivism about practical reasons should be combined with pluralism both about the nature of practical reasons and about action explanations. We argue for an ‘expanding circle of practical reasons’, starting out from an open-minded monist objectivism. On this view, practical reasons are not limited to actual facts, but consist in states of affairs, possible facts that may or may not obtain. Going beyond such ‘that-ish’ reasons, we argue that goals are also bona fide practical reasons. This (...) makes for a genuine pluralism about practical reasons. Furthermore, the facts or states of affairs that function as practical reasons are not exclusively natural or descriptive, but include normative facts. That normative facts can be reasons justifies a pluralism about reason explanations, one which allows for what we call enkratic explanations in addition to teleological ones. (shrink)

I argue that believing at will – i.e. believing for practical reasons – is in some sense possible and in some sense impossible. It is impossible insofar as we think of belief formation as a re-sult of our exercise of certain capacities (perception, memory, agency). But insofar as we think of belief formation as an action that might lead to such a result (i.e. a deliberation or an in-quiry), believing at will is possible. First I present and clarify the problem (...) and its philosophical relevance (section 1). I then argue that a belief formation as an immediate reaction to practical reasons is not necessarily equivalent to believing at will because the causal mechanism that leads to the formation might be deviant (section 2). Finally, I explain the difference between the two above mentioned meanings of “belief formation” in order to clarify the possibility and impossibility of believing at will (section 3). (shrink)

Die vorliegende Untersuchung zeigt, warum es vielversprechend ist, das Projekt einer kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie in der Tradition der Frankfurter Schule auf der Grundlage einer Theorie der Anerkennung durchzuführen. Die Kategorie der Anerkennung hat in diesem Zusammenhang besonderen Wert, weil sich mit ihr soziale Verhältnisse sowohl analysieren als auch kritisieren lassen. Als Anerkennungstheorie vermag die Kritische Theorie wesentliche Ziele in den Bereichen der Sozialtheorie und der Sozialkritik zu erreichen. Anhand einer neuen Interpretation einiger klassischer philosophischer und sozialwissenschaftlicher Texte zeigt die vorliegende Untersuchung, (...) warum Hegels Praktische Philosophie das Projekt einer kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie in der Tradition der Frankfurter Schule stärker bereichern kann, als bisher angenommen wurde. Darüber hinaus bietetdas Buch,,Anerkennung" als Prinzip der Kritischen Theorie eine gründliche Rekonstruktion und kritische Erörterung der anerkennungsbezogenen Überlegungen des jungen Marx. In ihr steht die Auseinandersetzung mit klassischen Texten unter systematischen Fragestellungen. (shrink)

We analyze axioms and postulates as speech acts. After a brief historical appraisal of the concept of axiom in Euclid, Frege, and Hilbert, we evaluate contemporary axiomatics from a linguistic perspective. Our reading is inspired by Hilbert and is meant to account for the assertive, directive, and declarative components of modern axiomatics. We will do this by describing the constitutive and regulative roles that axioms possess with respect to the linguistic practice of mathematics.

This volume features a collection of essays on consciousness, which has become one of the hot topics at the crossroads between neuroscience, philosophy, and religious studies. Is consciousness something the brain produces? How can we study it? Is there just one type of consciousness or are there different states that can be discriminated? Are so called "higher states of consciousness" that some people report during meditation pointing towards a new understanding of consciousness? Meditation research is a new discipline that shows (...) new inroads into the study of consciousness. If a meditative practice changes brain structure itself this is direct proof of the causal influence of consciousness onto its substrate. If different states of consciousness can be linked with properties and states of the brain this can be used to study consciousness more directly. If the sense of self is modifiable through meditative techniques and this can be objectively shown through neuro-imaging, this has profound implications for our understanding of who we are. Can consciousness, in deep states of meditative absorption, actually access some aspect of reality which we normally don't? Meditation research can potentially foster us with a new access to the phenomenological method in general. This has even been branded with a new catch-phrase: Contemplative Science. It brings together the most modern neuroscientific approach and the most advanced phenomenological methodology of studying the mind from within, through highly skilled self-observation that has gone through many thousand hours of honing the capacity to look carefully, without distraction. This book addresses these issues by bringing together some of the leading researchers and thinkers in the field. The scope of the volume reaches from first person neuroscience to Indian philosophy, from pedagogic applications to epistemological aspects and from compassion meditation to the study of brain activity. (shrink)

In workplace settings, skilled participants cooperate on the basis of shared routines in smooth and often implicit ways. Our study shows how interactional histories provide the basis for routine coordination. We draw on theater rehearsals as a perspicuous setting for tracking interactional histories. In theater rehearsals, the process of building performing routines is in focus. Our study builds on collections of consecutive performances of the same instructional task coming from a corpus of video-recordings of 30 h of theater rehearsals of (...) professional actors in German. Over time, instructions and their implementations are routinely coordinated by virtue of accumulated shared interactional experience: Instructions become shorter, the timing of responses becomes increasingly compacted and long negotiations are reduced to a two-part sequence of instruction and implementation. Overall, a routine of how to perform the scene emerges. Over interactional histories, patterns of projection of next actions emanating from instructions become reliable and can be used by respondents as sources for anticipating and performing relevant next actions. The study contributes to our understanding of how shared knowledge and routines accumulate over shared interactional experiences in publicly performed and reciprocally perceived ways and how this impinges on the efficiency of joint action. (shrink)

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to argue that the connection between hermeneutics and practical philosophy is so strong that one needs to consider hermeneutics as the outline of an ethical sensibility, one that takes up the challenges that are outlined by Heidegger's call for an “original ethics.“ Part of this argument entails demonstrating how understanding, the real task of every hermeneutic project, is ultimately a form of self-understanding.

The aim of this paper is to connect the traditional epistemological issue of justification with what one might call the “new reasons paradigm” coming from the philosophy of action and metaethics. More specifically, I will show that Conee and Feldman’s mentalism, a version of internalism about justification, can profitably be spelled out in terms of subjective normative reasons. On the way to achieving this aim, I will argue that it is important to ask not just the oft-discussed ontological question about (...) epistemic reasons—what kind of entities are they?—but also: Reasons in which sense are fundamental to justification? (shrink)

Recently, there has been a lot of enthusiasm for mindfulness practice and its use in healthcare, businesses and schools. An increasing number of studies give us ground for cautious optimism about the potential of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) to improve people's lives across a number of dimensions. This paper identifies and addresses some of the main ethical and political questions for larger-scale MBIs. First, how far are MBIs compatible with liberal neutrality given the great diversity of lifestyles and conceptions of the (...) good characteristic of modern societies? It will be argued that the potential benefits of contemporary secular mindfulness practice are indeed of a sufficiently primary or all-purpose nature to qualify as suitable goals of liberal public policy. Second, what challenges are brought up if mindfulness is used in contexts and applications—such as military settings—whose goals seem incompatible with the ethical and soteriological views of traditional mindfulness practice? It will be argued that, given concerns regarding liberal neutrality and reasonable disagreement about ethics, MBIs should avoid strong ethical commitments. Therefore, it should, in principle, be applicable in contexts of controversial moral value. Finally, drawing on recent discussions within the mindfulness community, it is argued that we should not overstate the case for mindfulness and not crowd out discussion of organisational and social determinants of stress, lowered well-being, and mental illness and the collective measures necessary to address them. (shrink)

This paper is a reply to Jonathan Riley’s criticism of my reading of Mill (both published in the Philosophical Quarterly 2003). I show that Riley’s interpretation has no textual support in Mill’s writing by putting the supposedly supporting quotations in their proper context. Secondly it is demonstrated how my reading is not incompatible with hedonism. Mill’s use of the concepts of ‘quality’, ‘quantity’, and ‘pleasure’ are explained and illustrated. I conclude by considering whether the possible redundancy of Mill’s quality/quantity discussion (...) would be problematic. (shrink)

In order to refute the widely held belief that the game known as ‘Newcomb's paradox’ is physically nonsensical and impossible to imagine (e.g. because it involves backward causation), I tell a story in which the game is realized in a classical, deterministic universe in a physically plausible way. The predictor is a collection of beings which are by many orders of magnitude smaller than the player and which can, with their exquisite measurement techniques, observe the particles in the player's body (...) so accurately that they can predict his choice (in much the same way as we can predict the motion of celestial bodies). I argue that the player, by choosing whether to take only one box or both boxes, influences whether or not, in the past, the predictor put a million pounds into the second box. Yet, I establish that no causal paradox can arise in this set-up. (shrink)

In October 2005, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization adopted the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights . A concept of central importance in the declaration is that of “human dignity”. However, there is lack of clarity about its scope, especially concerning the question of whether prenatal human life has the same dignity and rights as born human beings. This ambiguity has implications for the interpretation of important articles of the delcaration, including 2, 4, 8, 10 and (...) 11. The paper applies relevant provisions of the UDBHR to specific cases, addresses problems of internal consistency and considers attempts at clarifying the scope of “human dignity” by the negotiating parties. An analysis of the important relationship between the UDBHR and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the UDBHR refers in its title and elsewhere, shows that because of a crucial emphatic asymmetry, a broad reading according to which the UDBHR must be understood to ascribe human rights and dignity to prenatal life is untenable. However, the view that the UDBHR confers human rights and dignity on humans from the moment of birth onwards is robust and defensible. This conclusion is important for a proper understanding of the declaration and its use, as stated in Articles 1 and 22, the latter urging states “… to give effect to the principles … in this declaration”. Similarly, it has implications for the use of the declaration in the wider context of bioethics-related law and policy, as well as in academic and other discussions where increasing reference to the UDBHR is likely. (shrink)

This contribution examines the relevance of the concept “limit situation” in relation to aging and old age in a geriatric psychotherapy setting. The idea is to bring together concepts from phenomenology and the philosophy of age with methods from the field of qualitative social research. Experiences of groundlessness are viewed through the lens of Karl Jaspers’ terminology, leading to conceptualizing a dynamic of stabilizing beliefs yielding in the context of aging and old age. The results promise to contribute to psychotherapy (...) research and explore new ways for employing phenomenological ideas in clinical practice and research. (shrink)

In this chapter, I clarify the notions of mental content and of concept. I present competing views on these notions and indicate my own position. I introduce content in terms of correctness conditions and distinguish several kinds of propositions, as well as non-propositional scenario content, with which perceptual content might be identified. I relate this discussion to a wide-spread commitment in philosophy of perception to respect the subject’s perceptual perspective in ascriptions of perceptual content. Then I compare views of concepts (...) as Fregean senses, as mental representations, and as cognitive abilities and investigate how they relate to the central idea that concepts are possessed by subjects. I suggest that our talk of concept possession and exercise is anchored in subjects’ abilities for re-identification and for general thought and in their inferential abilities. I clarify how possession and exercise of these three conceptual abilities relate. (shrink)

Jacobson finds two distinct meanings of “dignity” in the literature on dignity and health: intrinsic human dignity and social dignity constituted through interactions with caregivers. Especially the latter has been central in empirical health research and warrants further exploration. This article focuses on the social dignity of people marginalized by mental illness, substance abuse and comparable conditions in extramural settings. 35 studies published between 2007 and 2017 have addressed this issue, most of them identifying norms for social dignity: civilized interactions, (...) non-stigmatizing treatment, treatment as unique individuals, being taken seriously, maintaining a positive identity, experiencing independence, relating to others, and participating in daily life. We argue that these norms belong to ideal theory, whereas we agree with Robeyns and others that improving practice is better served by non-ideal theory. Towards this end, we derive from the literature four building blocks for a non-ideal theory of dignity: avoid violations of dignity rather than seeking to promote it; dignity is not a goal to be reached; it requires ongoing effort; promoting dignity is a balancing act; contradictory norms can make it impossible to realize; and dignity can be undermined by organizational and discursive constraints. (shrink)

As part of the SYNBIOSAFE project, we carried out an open electronic conference (e-conference), with the aim to stimulate an open debate on the societal issues of synthetic biology in a proactive way. The e-conference attracted 124 registered participants from 23 different countries and different professional backgrounds, who wrote 182 contributions in six different categories: (I) Ethics; (II) Safety; (III) Security; (IV) IPR; (V) Governance and regulation; (VI) and Public perception. In this paper we discuss the main arguments brought up (...) during the e-conference and provide our conclusions about how the community thinks, and thinks differently on the societal impact of synthetic biology. Finally we conclude that there is a chance for an open discourse on the societal issues of synthetic biology happening, and that the rules to govern such a discourse might be set up much easier and be respected more readily than many would suggest. (shrink)

This chapter explores whether a version of causalism about reasons for action can be saved by giving up Davidsonian psychologism and endorsing objectivism, so that the reasons for which we act are the normative reasons that cause our corresponding actions. We address two problems for ‘objecto-causalism’, actions for merely apparent normative reasons and actions performed in response to future normative reasons—in neither of these cases can the reason for which the agent acts cause her action. To resolve these problems, we (...) move from objecto-causalism to ‘objecto-capacitism’, which appeals to agential competences manifest-ed in acting for a reason. We briefly apply this view of reasons for action to historical action explanations. (shrink)

This chapter discusses (in German) John Stuart Mill's position on paternalism and how it relates to his book 'The Subjection of Women'. It is argued that Mill's claim (in On Liberty) that one should not be allowed to sell oneself into slavery is making reference to the Victorian marriage contract through which women essentially become slaves of their husbands. As argued in Subjection, women do not freely develop the desire to get married, the social circumstances do not leave them any (...) other options. Necessarily unaware of what married life is like, the decision to get married is like crossing an unsafe bridge without knowing it is unsafe. It is not paternalist, as Mill argues, to alert them to the condition of the bridge and put them in the position to decide for themselves whether they want to cross it (or turn back half way, e.g. by divorcing). (shrink)

One of six commentaries on “Obesity: Chasing an Elusive Epidemic,” by Daniel Callahan, from the January‐February 2013 issue.

There are two rival theories of time: static and dynamic. The Special Theory of Relativity is one of the strongest arguments for static time. However, the defenders of dynamic time claim that their approach is also possible in a relativistic setting. This debate supported the third theory: the hybrid theory of time. The aim of this paper, however, is to argue that the hybrid theory is against the nature of the Special Theory of Relativity. The argument is motivated by H. (...) Stein’s attempt to separate definite past from indefinite future by timelike and lightlike relations in and on the past pointing light cone. The paper shows that this approach leads to restricted and extremely unintuitive notion of co-presence. This is considered as a serious objection against the animation of static time in a relativistic setting. (shrink)

BackgroundDeciphering the amount of work provided by different co-authors of a scientific paper has been a recurrent problem in science. Despite the myriad of metrics available, the scientific community still largely relies on the position in the list of authors to evaluate contributions, a metric that attributes subjective and unfounded credit to co-authors. We propose an easy to apply, universally comparable and fair metric to measure and report co-authors contribution in the scientific literature. MethodsThe proposed Author Contribution Index (ACI) is (...) based on contribution percentages provided by the authors, preferably at the time of submission. Researchers can use ACI to compare the contributions of different authors, describe the contribution profile of a particular researcher or analyse how contribution changes through time. We provide such an analysis based on contribution percentages provided by 97 scientists from the field of ecology who voluntarily responded to an online anonymous survey.ResultsACI is simple to understand and to implement because it is based solely on percentage contributions and the number of co-authors. It provides a continuous score that reflects the contribution of one author as compared to the average contribution of all other authors. For example, ACI(i) = 3, means that author i contributed three times more than what the other authors contributed on average. Our analysis comprised 836 papers published in 2014-2016 and revealed patterns of ACI values that relate to career advancement.ConclusionThere are many examples of author contribution indices that have been proposed but none has really been adopted by scientific journals. Many of the proposed solutions are either too complicated, not accurate enough or not comparable across articles, authors and disciplines. The author contribution index presented here addresses these three major issues and has the potential to contribute to more transparency in the science literature. If adopted by scientific journals, it could provide job seekers, recruiters and evaluating bodies with a tool to gather information that is essential to them and cannot be easily and accurately obtained otherwise. We also suggest that scientists use the index regardless of whether it is implemented by journals or not. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Not These Sounds":Beethoven at MauthausenJames SchmidtIOn May 7, 2000, the British conductor Simon Rattle led the Vienna Philharmonic in a memorial performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the site of the former Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen.1 The concert marked the fifty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of the Austrian camp, which had been established shortly after the Anschluss to receive prisoners who—in the argot of the Third Reich—were classified (...) as "unreformable" and "scarcely trainable."2 Those initially imprisoned included Austrian and German criminals, political prisoners, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Roma. They were later joined by Poles, Spanish civil war refugees who had been interned in France and were turned over to German authorities by the Vichy government, Soviet and other prisoners of war, and Jews, many of whom were transferred from camps abandoned in the face of advancing Soviet troops during the last year of the war.3The function of Mauthausen was to work inmates to death. It proved to be ruthlessly efficient in carrying out its mission. Estimates of the total number killed range upward from 119,000 and the mortality rate was surpassed only by the extermination camps established in occupied Poland in 1941 and 1942 (Horowitz, p. 10). The camp was built around a working quarry, and prisoners were compelled to carry loads of stones [End Page 146] up the 186 steps that led from the base of the quarry to the surface. Inmates were regularly killed in falls or struck by falling rocks. But not all of the deaths at Mauthausen were the result of these horrific working conditions. Guards regularly forced prisoners outside the boundaries of the camp and then shot them on the pretense that they were attempting to escape. Between October 1941 and January 1942 prisoners were driven en masse into bathing areas where they were subjected to extended showers in frigid water: the weaker inmates collapsed and were drowned, their bodies clogging the drains, while guards forced others beneath the rising waters. Still other prisoners seized the only means of escape they could find and jumped to their death from the top of the quarry, prompting civilian laborers employed at the camp to complain to authorities about having to work amidst gore and pieces of brain (Horowitz, pp. 52–53).Authorities responded to epidemics of typhus and dysentery—the result of overcrowding in the camp—by shooting the sick. With the arrival of POWs from the Russian front, mass executions by firing squads began, and in 1941 the first gassing chamber was built at the nearby Castle Hartheim. As the slaughter increased, the municipal crematorium south of the camp was supplemented by three new crematoria constructed within the boundaries of the camp itself. When they were operational, tufts of human hair flew out of their chimneys onto the streets of Mauthausen itself, a peaceful town of about 1,800 residents who—while annoyed by the stench of burning flesh and not insensitive to the coarsening of life that the presence of so many soldiers brought to the region—generally kept to themselves and tried not to raise too many questions about what was going on at the camp (Horowitz, pp. 60–62). It was to this spot, then, that the Vienna Philharmonic came, in the late spring of 2000, to perform a symphony that ends with a choral setting of Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy." Given the history of the place, it would be difficult to think of a more peculiar choice.IIThe concert at Mauthausen was intended as a contribution to a process of commemoration and reconciliation. In the eyes of those involved in its planning, it was a way to remember those who perished and to confront a part of Austrian history that was largely ignored by a nation that tended to see itself more as an unwilling victim of the [End Page 147] horrors of the National Socialist period than as an active participant in their commission. Yet, almost from the outset, the concert was plagued with controversy.Elections held in the previous autumn resulted in the formation of a government that included Jörg Haider... (shrink)

Charles Peirce incorporates modality into his Existential Graphs by introducing the broken cut for possible falsity. Although it can be adapted to various modern modal logics, Zeman demonstrates that making no other changes results in a version that he calls Gamma-MR, an implementation of Jan Łukasiewicz's four-valued Ł-modal system. It disallows the assertion of necessity, reflecting a denial of determinism, and has theorems involving possibility that seem counterintuitive at first glance. However, the latter is a misconception that arises from overlooking (...) the distinction between the intermediate truth values that are assigned to possibly true propositions as either X-contingent or Y-contingent. Any two propositions having the same ITV are possible together, while any two propositions having different ITVs, including those that are each other's negation, are possible individually yet not possible together. Porte shows that Ł-modal can be translated into classical logic by defining a constant for each ITV such that its implication of another proposition asserts the latter's possibility, while its conjunction with another proposition asserts the latter's necessity. These are expressed in the Alpha part of EG without broken cuts, simplifying derivations and shedding further light on Łukasiewicz's system, as long as graphs including either of the constants are properly interpreted. Ł-modal and Gamma-MR thus capture the two-sided nature of possibility as the limit between truth and falsity in Peirce's triadic conception. (shrink)

Presumably, everyone has, at some point in their lives, felt lonely. Loneliness is, in that particular sense, omnipresent. What it feels like to be lonely can, however, vary significantly. Loneliness is far from being a homogeneous phenomenon. Different kinds of loneliness need to be distinguished, considering its causes, contexts, a person’s capacities to cope with it, and many other factors. This paper introduces the notion of a specific kind of loneliness: experiential loneliness. Experiential loneliness, it will be argued, consists in (...) particular ways of experiencing the world, oneself, and others. Although feelings of being lonely in one way or another can emanate from one’s experience of the world being structured in a particular manner, such kinds of loneliness need not—at least, not always and the whole time—lead to emotional feelings that are concerned with one’s loneliness or the lack of meaningful social relationship. Loneliness can give rise to quite different emotional feelings that sometimes even cover up their provenience from underlying experiential loneliness. The notion of experiential loneliness, it is suggested, helps to tie back certain styles of thinking, desires, feelings, and behaviors to contexts of loneliness. Moreover, it will be argued that the notion can also elucidate the development of feelings of being lonely in contexts in which others are not only around but also available. To develop and enrich the notion of experiential loneliness as well as to exemplify its usefulness, a closer look will be taken at the case of borderline personality disorder, a condition in which sufferers are often plagued by loneliness. (shrink)

Discussion about the application of scientific knowledge in robotics in order to build people helpers is widespread. The issue herein addressed is philosophically poignant, that of robots that are “people”. It is currently popular to speak about robots and the image of Man. Behind this lurks the dialogical mind and the questions about the significance of an artificial version of it. Without intending to defend or refute the discourse in favour of ‘recreating’ Man, a lesser familiar question is brought forth: (...) “and what if we were capable of creating a very convincible replica of man (constructing a robot-person), what would the consequences of this be and would we be satisfied with such technology?” Thorny topic; it questions the entire knowledge foundation upon which strong AI/Robotics is positioned. The author argues for improved monitoring of technological progress and thus favours implementing weaker techniques. (shrink)