Imagination is important for many things in science: solving problems, interpreting data, designing studies, etc. Philosophers of imagination typically account for the productive role played by imagination in science by focusing on how imagination is constrained, e.g., by using self-imposed rules to infer logically, or model events accurately. But the constraints offered by these philosophers either constrain too much, or not enough, and they can never account for uses of imagination that are needed to break today’s constraints in order to (...) make progress tomorrow. Thus, epistemology of imagination needs to make room for an element of epistemological anarchy. (shrink)

In _The Immorality of Punishment_ Michael Zimmerman argues forcefully that not only our current practice but indeed any practice of legal punishment is deeply morally repugnant, no matter how vile the behaviour that is its target. Despite the fact that it may be difficult to imagine a state functioning at all, let alone well, without having recourse to punishing those who break its laws, Zimmerman makes a timely and compelling case for the view that we must seek and put (...) into practice alternative means of preventing crime and promoting social stability. (shrink)

In this paper I propose to shed new light on the role of feeling in Kant’s psychology of moral motivation by focusing on the concept of an incentive (Triebfeder), a term he borrowed from one of his most important rationalist predecessors, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. I argue that, similar to Baumgarten, Kant understands an incentive to refer to the ground of desire and that feelings function as a specific kind of ground within Kant’s psychology of moral action, namely as the ‘impelling (...) cause’ of desire. I claim that this interpretation has several advantages over the alternatives currently on offer in the literature. (shrink)

Psychopaths exhibit diminished ability to grieve. Here I address whether this inability can be explained by the trademark feature of psychopaths, namely, their diminished capacity for interpersonal empathy. I argue that this hypothesis turns out to be correct, but requires that we conceptualize empathy not merely as an ability to relate (emotionally and ethically) to other individuals but also as an ability to relate to past and present iterations of ourselves. This reconceptualization accords well with evidence regarding psychopaths’ intense focus (...) on the temporal present and difficulties in engaging in mental time travel, as well as with the essentially egocentric and identity-based nature of grief. -/- . (shrink)

The history of the philosophy of thought experiments has touched on the work of Kuhn, Popper, Duhem, Mach, Lakatos, and other big names of the 20th century, but so far, almost nothing has been written about Paul Feyerabend. His most influential work was Against Method, 8 chapters of which concern a case study of Galileo with a specific focus on Galileo’s thought experiments. In addition, the later Feyerabend was very interested in what might be called the epistemology of drama, including (...) stories and myths. This paper brings these different aspects of Feyerabend’s work together in an attempt to present what might have been his considered views on scientific thought experiments. I conclude by contrasting Feyerabend’s ideas with two modern currents in the debate surrounding thought experiments: 1) the claim that the epistemology of thought experiments is just the epistemology of deductive or inductive arguments, and 2) the claim that the specifically narrative quality of thought experiments must be taken into account if we want a complete epistemology of thought experiments. (shrink)

Past research has found that the value of a person's activities can affect observers' judgments about whether that person is experiencing certain emotions (e.g., people consider morally good agents happier than morally bad agents). One proposed explanation for this effect is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about fittingness (whether the emotion is merited). Another hypothesis is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about the agent's true self (whether the emotion reflects how the agent feels “deep down”). We (...) tested these hypotheses in six studies. After finding that people think a wide range of emotions can be fitting and reflect a person's true self (Study 1), we tested the predictions of these two hypotheses for attributions of happiness, love, sadness, and hatred. We manipulated the emotions' fittingness (Studies 2a-b and 4) and whether the emotions reflected an agent's true self (Studies 3 and 5), measuring emotion attributions as well as fittingness judgments and true self judgments. The fittingness manipulation only impacted emotion attributions in the cases where it also impacted true self judgments, whereas the true self manipulation impacted emotion attribution in all cases, including those where it did not impact fittingness judgments. These results cast serious doubt on the fittingness hypothesis and offer some support for the true self hypothesis, which could be developed further in future work. -/- . (shrink)

The doctrine of double effect has a firm, respected position within Roman Catholic medical ethics. Neil M. Gorsuch, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, believes that this doctrine also enjoys a central place within U.S. law. This essay examines and assesses Gorsuch’s thesis. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.1 (Spring 2011): 31–40.

The desire for a meaningful life is ubiquitous, yet the ordinary concept of a meaningful life is poorly understood. Across six experiments (total N = 2,539), we investigated whether third-person attributions of meaning depend on the psychological states an agent experiences (feelings of interest, engagement, and fulfillment), or on the objective conditions of their life (e.g., their effects on others). Studies 1a–b found that laypeople think subjective and objective factors contribute independently to the meaningfulness of a person’s life. Studies 2a–b (...) found that positive mental states are thought to make a life more meaningful, even if derived from senseless activities (e.g., hand-copying the dictionary). Studies 3a–b found that agents engaged in morally bad activities are not thought to have meaningful lives, even if they feel fulfilled. In short, both an agents’ subjective mental states and objective impact on the world affect how meaningful their lives appear. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel distinction between accounts of scientific representation: it distinguishes thin accounts from thick accounts. Thin accounts focus on the descriptive aspect of representation whereas thick accounts acknowledge the evaluative aspect of representation. Thin accounts focus on the question of what a representation as such is. Thick accounts start from the question of what an adequate representation is. In this paper, I give two arguments in favor of a thick account, the Argument of the Epistemic Aims of (...) Modeling and the Argument of the Normativity of the Practice of Modeling. I also discuss possible objections to a thick account: the Argument from Misrepresentation and the Objections from Model Testing. The conclusion will be that the arguments on balance support a thick account of representation. (shrink)

Call ‘radical moral theorizing’ the project of developing a moral theory that not only tries to conform to our existing moral judgments, but also manifests various theoretical virtues: consistency, simplicity, explanatory depth, and so on. Many moral philosophers assume that radical moral theorizing does not require any particular metaethical commitments. In this paper, I argue against this assumption. The most natural justification for radical moral theorizing presupposes moral realism, broadly construed; in contrast, there may be no justification for radical moral (...) theorizing if moral anti-realism is true. (shrink)

After outlining why the notion of conscious control of action matters to us and after distinguishing different challenges to that notion, the contribution focuses on the challenge posed by the literature on unconscious goal pursuit. Based on a conceptual clarification of the notion of consciousness, I argue that the understanding of consciousness in that literature is too restricted. The hypothesis that the behaviors reported can be accounted for by nonconceptual forms of consciousness, such as emotions and motor experiences, rather than (...) by—conscious or unconscious—conceptual level intentions tends to be disregarded, even though it promises to be empirically fruitful. (shrink)

Aestheticians generally agree that the aesthetic features of an object depend upon the non-aesthetic features of an object, and that this dependence can be captured by some formulation of the supervenience relation. I argue that the aesthetic depends upon the non-aesthetic in various and importantly different ways; that these dependence relations cannot be explained by supervenience; that appeals to supervenience create puzzles that aestheticians have neither fully appreciated nor resolved; and that appealing to various realization relations avoids these puzzles and (...) allows for a richer description of how the aesthetic depends upon the non-aesthetic. (shrink)

Leo Strauss and his alleged political influence regarding the Iraq War have in recent years been the subject of significant media attention, including stories in the _Wall Street Journal _and _New York Times._ _Time_ magazine even called him “one of the most influential men in American politics.” With _The Truth about Leo Strauss_, Michael and Catherine Zuckert challenged the many claims and speculations about this notoriously complex thinker. Now, with _Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy_, they turn (...) their attention to a searching and more comprehensive interpretation of Strauss’s thought as a whole, using the many manifestations of the “problem of political philosophy” as their touchstone. For Strauss, political philosophy presented a “problem” to which there have been a variety of solutions proposed over the course of Western history. Strauss’s work, they show, revolved around recovering—and restoring—political philosophy to its original Socratic form. Since positivism and historicism represented two intellectual currents that undermined the possibility of a Socratic political philosophy, the first part of the book is devoted to Strauss’s critique of these two positions. Then, the authors explore Strauss’s interpretation of the history of philosophy and both ancient and modern canonical political philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Locke. Strauss’s often-unconventional readings of these philosophers, they argue, pointed to solutions to the problem of political philosophy. Finally, the authors examine Strauss’s thought in the context of the twentieth century, when his chief interlocutors were Schmitt, Husserl, Heidegger, and Nietzsche. The most penetrating and capacious treatment of the political philosophy of this complex and often misunderstood thinker, from his early years to his last works, _Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy_ reveals Strauss’s writings as an attempt to show that the distinctive characteristics of ancient and modern thought derive from different modes of solving the problem of political philosophy and reveal why he considered the ancient solution both philosophically and politically superior. (shrink)

Student employability is a key aspect of any university degree. The relationship between high student learning outcomes and high employability is a problem that needs to be addressed and improved by colleges and universities. Students with high employability can find good jobs after graduation and perform well in the workplace. Employability is associated with the success of university education, thus giving the university a good reputation. This study explores the development of employability, alongside teaching and student learning abilities to examine (...) how these variables affect student employability. The study collected 442 responses to a questionnaire to investigate the relationship between pedagogy for employability, problem-based learning, absorptive capacity, and student employability based on a structural model. The SEM results show that pedagogy for employability and problem-based learning positively correlate to absorptive capacity; pedagogy for employability and absorptive capacity positively correlate to student employability. We then analyzed a case study teaching intervention strategy with 221 students from the school of management and discuss the differential results of all variables. Results showed that the test group was superior to the control group in each variable performance, indicating that the intervention strategy proved effective. Based on these findings, this study proposes suggestions for future research. (shrink)

The physiologist and neo-Kantian philosopher Johannes von Kries (1853-1928) wrote one of the most philosophically important works on the foundation of probability after P.S. Laplace and before the First World War, his Principien der Wohrscheinlich-keitsrechnung (1886, repr. 1927). In this book, von Kries developed a highly original interpretation of probability, which maintains it to be both logical and objectively physical. After presenting his approach I shall pursue the influence it had on Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann. It seems that von (...) Kries's approach had more potential than recognized in his time and that putting Waismann's and Wittgenstein's early work in a von Kries perspective is able to shed light on the notion of an elementary proposition. (shrink)

Let K be a finite set of finite structures. We give a syntactic characterization of the property: every element of K is injective in ISP(K). We use this result to establish that A is injective in ISP(A) for every two-element algebra A.

Russ Schafer-Landau’s ‘Moral judgement and normative reasons’ is admirably clear and to the point (Schafer-Landau 1999). He presents his own version of the argument for the practicality requirement on moral judgement – that is, for the claim that those who have moral beliefs are either motivated or practically irrational – that I gave in The Moral Problem (Smith 1994), and he then proceeds to identify several crucial problems. In what follows I begin by making some comments about his presentation of (...) the argument. I then confront the problems. (shrink)

Meta-ethical non-cognitivism makes two claims—a negative one and a positive one. The negative claim is that moral utterances do not express beliefs which provide the truth-conditions for those utterances. The positive claim is that the primary function of such utterances is to express certain of the speaker's desire-like states of mind. Non-cognitivism is officially a theory about the meanings of moral words, but non-cognitivists also maintain that moral states of mind are themselves at least partially constituted by desire-like states to (...) which moral utterances give voice. Non-cognitivists need a plausible account of what distinguishes whims, addictions and cravings from genuinely moral judgments. For while non-cognitivists maintain that in a suitably broad sense moral judgments just are constituted by desire-like states they also insist that not any old desire constitutes a genuinely moral judgment. Since the challenge is to demarcate what is distinctive about moral attitudes we might usefully call this the demarcation challenge. (shrink)

The individual officers of a social institution may not be racist and consequently not blameworthy for racism. On the other hand, the individual officers of such an institution may be racist and deserve blame for their racism. This chapter focuses on the special, idealized case of pure institutional racism in which all the individual office holders who participate in E-like institutions are free of racism. The attitude-independent model of institutional racism on which racist institutions can promote racial inequality in the (...) absence of personal racism on the part of office holders, does not absolve individuals of all responsibility. The chapter discusses the specific form of institutional racism with respect to which the no-individual-is-to-blame thesis is most plausible, namely attitude-independent racism, and has just touched upon a way in which the thesis needs to be revised. (shrink)

I present an interpretation of Adorno’s concept of nature that prompts a confrontation with both the domination of nature and the romanticization of nature. This interpretation would situate a normative stance toward human engagement with nature not in the idealization of a pre-social or pre-human nature, but in the (missed) possibilities of past human engagements with non-human nature. Experience of art, such as Edward Burtynsky’s photography, can push us toward such a stance. This stance forces a reconsideration of the dominant (...) form of self-preservation in most contemporary societies; nature cannot be realized until our species understands itself as a species. (shrink)

Many philosophers, both past and present, object to materialism not from any romantic anti-scientific bent, but from sheer inability to understand the thesis. It seems utterly inconceivable to some that qualia should exist in a world which is entirely material. This paper investigates the grain objection, a much neglected argument which purports to prove that sensations could not be brain events. Three versions are examined in great detail. The plausibility of the first version is shown to depend crucially on whether (...) one holds a direct or non-direct theory of perception. Only on the latter is this version plausible. An analysis of the second "semantic" version concludes that a materialist description and explanation of the world should not be expected to transparently convey all that would be of interest or importance to human beings. The final version explicitly makes use of Grover Maxwell's non-direct perceptual theory of structural realism. Although a confusion is charged to Maxwell between phenomenal and objective properties, the critical difficulty for the grain objection is its failure to characterize "structure" from a non-percipient point of view. As the grain objection is ultimately found wanting, the real difficulty for materialism crystallizes as its irreconciliability with the mere existence of sentience, which seems to force some sort of emergence upon us. (shrink)

Cumming (2008) argues that his Masked Ball problem undermines Millianism, and that we must instead treat names as variables. However, although the Masked Ball does pose a problem for the Millian given a standard view about the meaning of `believes', that view faces difficulties for independent reasons. I develop a novel ``neo Kaplanian'' attitude semantics to address this problem, and go on to show that with this alternative semantics in hand, the Millian is quite capable of accounting for the Masked (...) Ball. (shrink)

The contribution deals with the sources of Kant's criticism of the historical knowledge of philosophy. This criticism is an important motif in Kant's thought. Its contents are directed against Wolffianism. Nevertheless it was Christian Wolff who gave Kant the concept of the historical knowledge of philosophy. This concept is of great importance for Wolff, too. It can be traced back to the fight against Aristotelian scholastic philosophy. The reading of the traditional handbooks was criticized early, and the individual's own meditation (...) was challenged. Wolff formulated these intentions in his term: the historical knowledge of philosophy. Christian Thomasius and his followers, on the other hand, continued to criticize learning with the help of the memory, and they demanded the individual's own meditation. From this the slogan 'Selbstdenken' originated. Because of the opposition between the Wolffians and their opponents, for a long time 'self-thinking' and 'historical knowledge of philosophy' were treated side by side and independently of each other. Kant was the first to connect them definitively. He acknowledges the clarity of Wolff's terminology, but fills it up with the old content. (shrink)

Chapter One distinguishes the early, individualistic, writings from the later, more socially conscious ones. The metaphysical language of impermeable surfaces and levels, and rigid hierarchies, is consonant in James's writing with the assumption of what Dewey calls an individual/society split. ;Chapter Two focuses upon the relational self from the Principles of Psychology. The central pair of terms is that of strength/fragility, in which a self is revealed that is both functionally efficacious through activities of emphasis, selection, and negation, and permeable (...) to context. ;Chapter Three discusses the "social organism" and the "intellectual republic" from The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. James uses more socially conscious metaphors, and discusses the public and the private; "inner" and "outer" tolerance; and the "personal contribution," "X," which must be added to the "world," "M." ;Chapter Four discusses the "nucleus" of relations from Essays in Radical Empiricism. The personal aspect of social experience falls within the realm of "co-conscious relations" and the public falls within the sphere of the "conterminous." The strong side of the self, from Chapter Two; the private, or personal; inner tolerance; and the personal contribution, "X," from Chapter Three, belong to the sphere of co-conscious relations, as discussed in Chapter Four, just as the fragile side, the public; outer tolerance; and the world, "M," all belong to the sphere of conterminous relations. ;Chapter Five discusses the metaphor of Papini's corridor from Pragmatism. The adjoining rooms can be seen to symbolize the sphere of co-conscious relations, and the corridor of conterminous ones. The metaphysics of background and foreground points to an instrumentalist interpretation of the self, which represents a complete departure from James's early individualism. (shrink)

Adherents of traditional western Theism have espoused CONJUNCTION: God is essentially perfectly good and God is thankworthy for the good acts he performs. But suppose that (i) God’s essential perfect goodness prevents his good acts from being free, and that (ii) God is not thankworthy for an act that wasn’t freely performed. Together these entail the denial of CONJUNCTION. The most natural strategy for defenders of CONJUNCTION is to deny (i). We develop an argument for (i), and then identify two (...) ways for the defender of CONJUNCTION to respond. Next we turn to a considerably different, rather less obvious route toward defending CONJUNCTION that is compatible with (i)—one which instead denies (ii). Here too we identify two ways for the defender of CONJUNCTION to proceed, yielding a total of four ways for the theist to respond. Because the last of these represents an important and underappreciated alternative for the theist, we devote the second half of the paper to developing and defending it. We argue that divine responsibility is sufficient for divine thankworthiness and consistent with the absence of divine freedom. We do this while insisting on the view that both freedom and responsibility are incompatible with causal determinism. (shrink)

The learning process of both students and teachers can be predicted based on the learning mode. Therefore, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools must start using online learning and abandon more traditional teaching techniques. Thus, this study investigates the relationship between self-efficacy and academic resilience among 150 senior high school students. Thus, the researchers employed General Self-Efficacy and Resilience Scale. Finally, the statistical analysis reveals that the r coefficient of 0.78 indicates a high positive correlation between the variables. The p-value (...) of 0.00, which is less than 0.05, leads to the decision to reject the null hypothesis. Hence, a significant relationship exists between self-efficacy and resilience among senior high school students. (shrink)

Biblical scholar Michael Rhodes argues that the Bible offers a vision of justice-oriented discipleship that is critical for the formation of God's people. Grounded in biblical theology, virtue ethics, and his own experiences, he shows that justice is central to the Bible, central to Jesus, and central to authentic Christian discipleship.

Religious Education (RE) currently enjoys the status of a compulsory curriculum subject in state schools in England and Wales. Though it is not part of the National Curriculum, and therefore not subject to a nationally prescribed syllabus, it is part of the basic curriculum to which all children are entitled. The question I raise in this chapter is whether RE merits this status. Is the study of religion sufficiently central to the task of preparing children for adult life to justify (...) the existence of a separate and compulsory curriculum subject? (shrink)

I define ecosabotage and relate this definition to several well-known analyses of civil disobedience. I show that ecosabotage cannot be reduced to a form of civil disobedience unless the definition of civil disobedience is expanded. I suggest that ecosabotage and civil disobedience are special cases of the more general concept of conscientious wrongdoing. Although ecosabotage cannot be considered a form of civil disobedience on the basis of the standard analysis of this concept, the civil disobedience literature can provide important insights (...) into the justification of ecosabotage. First, traditional appeals to a higher law in justifying ecosabotage are no more successful than they are in justifying civil disobedience. Second, utilitarian justifications of ecosabotage are promising. At present there is no apriori reason tosuppose that some acts of ecosabotage could not be justified on utilitarian grounds, although such ecosaboteurs as Dave Foreman have not provided a full justification of its use in concrete cases. (shrink)

This article makes a contribution to interface criticism through the notion of chrono-design: the deliberate shaping of experiences of temporality and time through contemporary software techniques and digital technologies. This notion is articulated through discussions of network optimisation, user experience design, behavioural tracking, Hansen’s work on 21st-century media and Hayles’ framework of cognitive assemblages. In particular, the argument considers how contemporary user interfaces complicate conventional notions of the rational, self-reflexive subject by operating beyond consciousness at vast environmental dimensions and accelerated (...) micro-temporal speeds. These conditions, we argue, provide opportunities for new forms of behavioural suspense and captivation best exemplified through the figure of the trap. The politics and aesthetics of captivation, accordingly, should be considered as central to any expanded ecology of cognition. The article then concludes with a short demonstration of experimental uses of chrono-design methods applied critically to political economies of user tracking and data capture as a prompt for further interdisciplinary applied research in this domain. (shrink)

Can an ugly experiment be a good experiment? Philosophers have identified many beautiful experiments and explored ways in which their beauty might be connected to their epistemic value. In contrast, the present chapter seeks out (and celebrates) ugly experiments. Among the ugliest are those being designed by AI algorithms. Interestingly, in the contexts where such experiments tend to be deployed, low aesthetic value correlates with high epistemic value. In other words, ugly experiments can be good. Given this, we should conclude (...) that beauty is not generally necessary or sufficient for epistemic value, and increasing beauty will not generally tend to increase epistemic value. (shrink)

A lot of subordinating speech has moved online, which raises several questions for philosophers. Can current accounts of oppressive speech adequately capture digital hate? How does the anonymity of online harassers contribute to the force of their speech? This paper examines online abuse and argues that standard accounts of licensing and accommodation are not up to the task of explaining the authority of online hate speech, as speaker authority often depends on the community in more ways than these accounts suggests. (...) Instead I argue that online abusive speech is best understood as collective subordinating speech acts, as their authority is drawn from an ad hoc collective. I argue that anonymity and shared language offer online abusers a path to a type of group-authority that explains the harm their speech is capable of. I close by suggesting that similar considerations are in play for IRL subordinating speech, and that online abuse helps to reveal key features of subordinating speech across mediums that are under-emphasized in the existing literature. (shrink)

Confucius is perhaps the most important philosopher in history. Today, his teachings shape the daily lives of more than 1.6 billion people. Throughout East Asia, Confucius’s influence can be seen in everything from business practices and family relationships to educational standards and government policies. Even as western ideas from Christianity to Communism have bombarded the region, Confucius’s doctrine has endured as the foundation of East Asian culture. It is impossible to understand East Asia, journalist Michael Schuman demonstrates, without first (...) engaging with Confucius and his vast legacy. Confucius created a worldview that is in many respects distinct from, and in conflict with, Western culture. As Schuman shows, the way that East Asian companies are managed, how family members interact with each other, and how governments see their role in society all differ from the norm in the West due to Confucius’s lasting impact. Confucius has been credited with giving East Asia an advantage in today’s world, by instilling its people with a devotion to learning, and propelling the region’s economic progress. Still, the sage has also been highly controversial. For the past 100 years, East Asians have questioned if the region can become truly modern while Confucius remains so entrenched in society. He has been criticized for causing the inequality of women, promoting authoritarian regimes, and suppressing human rights. Despite these debates, East Asians today are turning to Confucius to help them solve the ills of modern life more than they have in a century. As a wealthy and increasingly powerful Asia rises on the world stage, Confucius, too, will command a more prominent place in global culture. Touching on philosophy, history, and current affairs, Confucius tells the vivid, dramatic story of the enigmatic philosopher whose ideas remain at the heart of East Asian civilization. (shrink)

In his engaging essay, “Deconstructing the Mind” (1996: 3-90), Stephen Stich raises some very good questions and gives some pretty good answers. My aim in this paper is to give some answers of my own, drawing on earlier work, and to compare these answers with Stich’s.

In describing the Stoic principles, the manuscript tradition of DL 7.134 preserves readings which variously call them σώµατα, ‘bodies’, or ἀσώµατα, ‘incorporeals’; but the Suida quotes this passage with ἀσωµάτους, ‘incorporeal’. This paper shows that the Suida has the best reading. This is not the only, or the clearest, case where the Suida can correct our text: another example considered here concerns DL 7.74.

IN SECTION X OF "AN INQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING", DAVID HUME RAISES TWO QUESTIONS ABOUT MIRACLES AND THEIR RELATION TO TESTIMONY. FIRST, HE ASKS WHETHER IT COULD EVER BE REASONABLE TO BELIEVE ON THE BASIS OF TESTIMONY THAT NATURE DOES NOT FIT THE IMAGE OF OUR SCIENCE, AND, SECOND, HE ASKS WHETHER IT COULD EVER BE REASONABLE TO BELIEVE ON THE BASIS OF TESTIMONY THAT NATURE IS NOT UNIFORM. HUME’S ANSWER TO THE FIRST QUESTION IS ’YES’ AND HIS ANSWER TO (...) THE SECOND IS ’NO’. HUME THINKS THAT A ’NO’ TO THE SECOND QUESTION SHOWS THAT BELIEF IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION IS LESS REASONABLE THAN A BELIEF IN MODERN SCIENCE. HOWEVER, HUME’S ’NO’ SEEMS TO OPPOSE HIS EMPIRICISM AND HIS BELIEF THAT THERE ARE NO NECESSARY TRUTHS ABOUT ANY MATTER OF FACT OR EXPERIENCE. THE POINT OF THIS PAPER IS TO SHOW THAT HUME CAN PROVE THAT THERE CAN BE NO TESTIMONY OF SUCH A QUANTITY OR QUALITY TO MAKE IT REASONABLE TO BELIEVE THAT NATURE IS NOT UNIFORM AND, AS RESULT, NO TESTIMONY TO MAKE IT REASONABLE TO. (shrink)

Bad jokes are not simply non-humorous texts. They are texts that are humorous for someone––their author at least––but not for their audience. Bad jokes thus involve a contextual––pragmatic––dimension that is neglected in the semantic theories of humor. In this paper, we propose an approach to humor based on the Aristotelian notion of surprising enthymemes. Jokes are analyzed as kinds of arguments, whose tacit dimension can be retrieved and justified by considering the “logic” on which it is based. However, jokes are (...) based on specific pragmatic conditions: they are regarded as arguments grounded on a generalization that is at the same time uncommon, retrievable, and acceptable or plausible for the audience. This perspective integrates the “local logic” of jokes within a broader rhetorical theory that ultimately rests on the communicative notion of common ground. (shrink)

The concept of empathy describes our capacity to understand the emotions and intentions of others and to relate to our conspecifics. Numerous studies investigated empathy as a state as well as a stable personality trait. For example, recent studies in neuroscience suggest, among other brain areas such as the insula or the ACC, a role of the somatosensory cortices for empathy. Since the classic understanding of the primary somatosensory cortex is to represent touch on the body surface, we here aimed (...) to test whether tactile performance is linked to the personality trait empathy. To test this, we examined the tactile acuity of 95 healthy participants by using a two-point discrimination threshold task at the index fingers. Trait empathy was assessed by employing the interpersonal reactivity index, which measures self-reported empathy with four scales. Results of regression analyses suggested the subscale empathic concern to be positively associated with performance in the tactile acuity task. We discuss this finding in the light of recent studies on empathy and consider possible implications of tactile training to enhance empathy. (shrink)