In this paper we present the results of a simulation study of credence developments in groups of communicating Bayesian agents, as they update their beliefs about a given proposition p. Based on the empirical literature, one would assume that these groups of rational agents would converge on a view over time, or at least that they would not polarize. This paper presents and discusses surprising evidence that this is not true. Our simulation study shows that these groups of Bayesian agents (...) show group polarization behavior under a broad range of circumstances. This is, we think, an unexpected result, that raises deeper questions about whether the kind of polarization in question is irrational. If one accepts Bayesian agency as the hallmark of epistemic rationality, then one should infer that the polarization we find is also rational. On the other hand, if we are inclined to think that there is something epistemically irrational about group polarization, then something must be off in the model employed in our simulation study. We discuss several possible interfering factors, including how epistemic trust is defined in the model. Ultimately, we propose that the notion of Bayesian agency is missing something in general, namely the ability to respond to higher-order evidence. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge in publications about the epistemology of ignorance. In this article, I examine the proliferation of the concept ignorance that has come with the increased interest in the topic. I identify three conceptions of ignorance in the current literature: (1) ignorance as lack of knowledge/true belief, (2) ignorance as actively upheld false outlooks and (3) ignorance as substantive epistemic practice. These different conceptions of ignorance are as of yet unacknowledged but are bound to impede epistemology (...) of ignorance and, therefore, need to be uncovered. After discussing three unsuccessful ways of dealing with these varying conceptions, I put forward an integrated conception of ignorance that is more adequate for serving as the foundation of epistemology of ignorance. Introducing an alternative conception of ignorance provides us with a foundation for both epistemological and more broadly philosophical work on ignorance. (shrink)

An escalating consumption of animal products characterizes contemporary Western society, resulting in severe environmental consequences and heightened exploitation of animals. Among these issues, livestock production stands out as particularly detrimental due to its significant climate impact and land usage. Paradoxically, the Swedish organic food sector positions cattle as central to achieving sustainable food production. This article delves into the strategies employed by organic organizations to legitimize the consumption of cattle’s meat and dairy. The aim is to examine how Swedish organic (...) organizations produce knowledge of sustainability, and how these sustainability constructions are intertwined with anthroparchy, a system of power relations between humans and cattle. Furthermore, the study investigates how cattle’s agencies and bodies are portrayed. Interviews, documents and media material from organic organizations in Sweden are analyzed to explore how carnism, norms of eating cattle’s meat and dairy, is maintained. The analytical framework applied is rooted in critical animal studies and draws inspiration from Foucauldian discourse analysis, examining the interplay between power and knowledge. The findings reveal that certain environmental aspects are emphasized to reinforce the norm of keeping cattle for food production, while other dimensions are overlooked. Organic organizations represent cows as active subjects transforming their environment to legitimize their status as consumable commodities. The findings also show how carnistic norms limit the organic sector’s ability to achieve environmental objectives. This study underscores how anthroparchy, the dominant power structures between humans and cattle, is reproduced in the Swedish organic context through sustainability discourses that emphasize the subjectivities of cattle. (shrink)

Spinoza’s philosophy develops in striking ways over the course of his philosophical career. In his first work on metaphysics, the Short Treatise, Spinoza insists that humility is one of the highest virtues and that human beings have no power of their own. But in his final work on metaphysics, the Ethics, Spinoza bluntly declares that humility is not a virtue and argues that our essence simply consists in power. This essay demonstrates the interconnectedness and significance of these apparently distinct shifts. (...) I argue that Spinoza’s re-evaluation of humility is a consequence of his re-thinking of human power and that attention to these shifts puts the debate over acosmism in a new and surprising light. (shrink)

This analysis investigates whether solidarity is an appropriate concept for thinking about justifications for a just distribution of bioethical goods in the international arena. This will be explored by looking at the national origins of the idea of justifying solidarity in the form of the health care that welfare states offer. Following that, ‘life’ and ‘health’ will be placed within a philosophical context by focusing on the main arguments of John Rawls and Amartya Sen and the role of solidarity in (...) these two theories of justice will be analysed. It will be shown that these theories assume that solidarity is not a prerequisite for just international structures. Finally, the possibility will be discussed, that there is a degree of uncertainty surrounding justifications for fair distribution in the international context that can result when the concepts of solidarity and justice are handled imprecisely. (shrink)

What is language? How did it originate and how does it work? What is its relation to thought and, beyond thought, to reality? Questions like these have been at the center of lively debate ever since the rise of scholarly activities in the Islamic world during the 8th/9th century. However, in contrast to contemporary philosophy, they were not tackled by scholars adhering to only one specific discipline. Rather, they were addressed across multiple fields and domains, no less by linguists, legal (...) theorists, and theologians than by Aristotelian philosophers. In response to the different challenges faced by these disciplines, highly sophisticated and more specialized areas emerged, comparable to what nowadays would be referred to as semantics, pragmatics, and hermeneutics, to name but a few – fields of research that are pursued to this day and still flourish in some of the traditional schools. Philosophy of language, thus, has been a major theme throughout Islamic intellectual culture in general; a theme which, probably due to its trans-disciplinary nature, has largely been neglected by modern research. This book brings together for the first time experts from the various fields involved, in order to explore the riches of this tradition and make them accessible to a broader public interested both in philosophy and the history of ideas more generally. (shrink)

A wide range of archaeological finds is rapidly expanding our knowledge of the pre-Islamic cultural milieu and the political structures of the Arabian Peninsula during Late Antiquity, and thereby of the Qurʾān’s cultural context. This material can offer a complementary reading to the literary accounts on pre-Islamic Arabia, which were mostly composed outside of Arabia or long after the late antique period. There is a growing need to make the recent exciting discoveries of scholars working on the Qurʾān and Arabia (...) more widely accessible to historians who may not have a solid background in archaeology and epigraphy. As such, the ERC project “The Qur'an as a Source for Late Antiquity” (QaSLA) organized a conference, titled “Epigraphy, the Qur'an, and the Religious Landscape of Arabia”, which took place in Tübingen on 8 – 10 September 2022. The three-day international conference brought together specialists in epigraphy as well as scholars of the Qurʾān to explore how recent epigraphic and archaeological findings and research have been changing our understanding of the Qurʾān and the Arabian religious, cultural, and political landscape. Accordingly, the conference sought to integrate new archaeological finds with ongoing studies on the genesis of the Qurʾān, its Arabian background, and the broader cultural milieu of pre-Islamic Arabia with a special focus on the dawn of Islam. The conference also featured an important contribution by Peter Webb on pre-Islamic poetry, another neglected corpus of inquiry into the history of pre-Islamic Arabia. Aiming to foster discussion between scholars, each panel was paired with a specialist on the Qurʾān or the wider history of Arabia. (shrink)

This article constitutes a review of the concept of resistance in critical human rights education (CHRE) and its relevance for democratic education (DE). Our conceptual analysis draws on resistance studies, the emerging study of CHRE, and its implications for DE, which we suggest are interconnected. Although resistance is tied to the history of human rights, there is a lack of conceptual analysis, which we aim to remedy in this article. We argue that resistance is a core element of CHRE for (...) promoting democracy and teaching ethically complex topics on injustices. Our approach transcends the problematic forms of HRE which can limit the discourse, produce blind spots, and empty the critical and ethical content of education. We illustrate some of the complexities of resistance through failures to resist human rights violations in democracies, but also the potential of resistance in CHRE to challenge global injustices and promote democracy. (shrink)

This study, regarding the problems surrounding 'time' during the 9th to 11th centuries, offers new insights into the scientific interests and rationality of the quadrivium, and argues for the existence of a 'discovery of nature' prior to the 12th century.

O texto aborda o modo como Gadamer articulou o pensamento de Platão na elabo-ração da hermenêutica filosófica, em especial o papel da dialética e do diálogo platônico.

Numerical magnitude information is assumed to be spatially represented in the form of a mental number line defined with respect to a body-centred, egocentric frame of reference. In this context, spatial language skills such as mastery of verbal descriptions of spatial position have been proposed to be relevant for grasping spatial relations between numerical magnitudes on the mental number line. We examined 4- to 5-year-old’s spatial language skills in tasks that allow responses in egocentric and allocentric frames of reference, as (...) well as their relative understanding of numerical magnitude. In addition, we evaluated influences of children’s absolute understanding of numerical magnitude assessed by their number word comprehension and of their knowledge on numerical sequences. Results indicated that when considering responses that corresponded to the egocentric perspective, children’s spatial language was associated significantly with their relative numerical magnitude understanding, even after controlling for covariates, such as children’s SES, mental rotation skills, and also absolute magnitude understanding or knowledge on numerical sequences. This suggests that the use of egocentric reference frames in spatial language may facilitate spatial representation of numbers along a mental number line and thus seem important for preschoolers’ relative understanding of numerical magnitude. (shrink)

Filosofisk værk om kærlighed med udgangpunkt i personalismen.

Against common misconceptions of Kant as a philosopher who neglects the emotional aspects of moral life, I show that he actually considers our emotional dispositions to be valuable tools for perfecting ourselves morally. ;I show not only that it is incumbent on us to cultivate morally beneficial emotions, but also how we can do it. Building on Kant's vague hints about what the process involves, I argue that cultivating a given feeling requires, above all, sharpening one's judgment about it, one's (...) sensitivity to its nature and to the shape it takes in one's own character in order to make responsible decisions about whether to act on the feeling and when one does choose to act on it, to express it in a way which harmonizes with one's sense of moral integrity. ;I begin with an argument showing that on Kant's mature moral theory, it is our duty to cultivate feelings which help us form a virtuous disposition. I then discuss particular feelings which are especially important in this regard. I begin with the feeling of respect for the moral law and show that it constitutes the motive of duty. Kant's "pure" moral motive--the motive of duty--is thus actually a feeling which is grounded in a rational grasp of the moral law. I then consider feelings associated with our duties toward ourselves and with our duties toward others and raise the question of how cultivated feelings figure in the virtuous character and also in relation to good willing and to morally worthy action. I show that certain "moral" feelings can become part of the motive of duty itself and so can serve as motives to morally worthy action. (shrink)

A formulação habermasiana de racionalidade aponta a possibilidade de renovação da base justificadora da educação, pela emergência do universal na comunicação entre as diferentes experiências dos atores, nutridas pelas particularidades do mundo vivido. Isso permite à educação orientar-se por uma racionalidade que assegure a pluralidade e as diferenças, bem como formar a identidade de sujeitos racionais capazes de assumir compromissos éticos.

This paper examines the potential pitfalls for academic research associated with goal displacements in the implementation of goals and indicators of research commercialization. We ask why patenting has come to serve as the key policy indicator of innovative capacity and what consequences this has for the organization of academic research. To address these questions, the paper presents a case study from Denmark on, firstly, why and how the 1999 Danish ‘Act on Inventions’ introduced patenting as a central instrument to Danish (...) science policy and, secondly, the effects the Act has had on Danish university organization and research practices. We trace why and how commercialization was introduced as an important objective in Danish science policy since the 1980s. The increased focus on patents is explained as an isomorphic adjustment to an international ‘science policy field,’ manifested in particular through OECD statistics, where patenting has come to serve as a key metric in international rankings. In a second step, we examine what effects the patenting requirements have had on organization and research practice at a Danish university. We show that in practice ‘number of patents’ changed from serving as an indicator of innovative capacity to being a policy goal in itself, thus in effect producing a goal displacement that is potentially damaging for both academic research and innovation capacity of the surrounding society. As a consequence of this goal displacement, active scientists now increasingly engage in patenting primarily as a means to fulfill organizational targets and to increase their ‘fundability,’ rather than to promote commercial applications of their research. In conclusion, we discuss how these unfulfilled policy ambitions have led to a retrospective redefinition of policy goals rather than an adjustment of the actual policy tools. (shrink)

Human fluid intelligence is closely linked to the sequential solving of complex problems. It has been associated with a distributed cognitive control or multiple-demand network, comprising regions of lateral frontal, insular, dorsomedial frontal, and parietal cortex. Previous neuroimaging research suggests that the MD network may orchestrate the allocation of attentional resources to individual parts of a complex task: in a complex target detection task with multiple independent rules, applied one at a time, reduced response to rule-critical events across the MD (...) network in lower fluid intelligence was observed. This was in particular the case with increasing task complexity, and was accompanied by impairment in performance. Here, we examined the early spatiotemporal neural dynamics of this process in electroencephalography source analyses using a similar task paradigm. Levels of fluid intelligence specifically predicted early neural responses in a left inferiorparietal MD region around 200–300 ms post stimulus onset. Evoked source amplitudes in left parietal cortex within this early time window also correlated with behavioural performance measures. Like in previous research, we observed impaired performance in lower fluid intelligence with increasing number of task rules. This links fluid intelligence to a process of attentional focus on those parts of a task that are most critical for the current behaviour. Within the MD system, our time re-resolved measures suggest that the left parietal cortex specifically impacts on early processes of attentional focus on task critical features. This is novel evidence on the neurocognitive correlates of fluid intelligence suggesting that individual differences are critically linked to an early process of attentional focus on task-relevant information, which is supported by left parietal MD regions. (shrink)

According to Vera Moser, the first professorship of healing pedagogy, Heilpädagogik at the University of Zürich in 1931, established pedagogy of the disabled as an academic discipline. Through the definition of the smallest common denominator for all disabilities, which Heinrich Hanselmann called “weakness of the soul,” a connecting element of “imbecility, deaf-mutism, blindness, neglect and idiocy” was established. Under Nazi rule, school pedagogy advanced to völkisch, nationalist special pedagogy, shifting from the category of “innate imbecility” to a broader concept of (...) disability. As an outcome of these programs and policies, 300,000 people with disabilities were killed as a part of the “T4 Aktion.” Within just a few decades after World War II, special pedagogy expanded its sphere of influence through professionalization and institutionalization in West and East Germany and across Europe. This paper explores how special pedagogy aligned itself with the Nazi regime’s discourse and policy on eugenics and race hygiene, leading to the murder and mass sterilization of “disabled” children and adults. It probes questions regarding the extent to which the professionalization of special pedagogy has drawn from the Nazi-era terminology of the deficient and foreign to legitimate the contemporary migrant bias in German and Austrian special pedagogical care. (shrink)

This article is focused on the concept of logic in Avicenna’s Isagoge, a text which had great impact both on Arabic and Western thought. Its main section is devoted to an investigation of Avicenna’s clarification of the nature of logic, its proper subject matter as well as its place within the canon of the philosophical sciences. In this connection, special attention is given to Avicenna’s use of the concepts ‘art’ and ‘science’. Significantly, he regards logic as both a science and (...) an art, and argues that in the latter sense, logic is an instrument for the philosophical sciences. Because Avicenna’s Isagoge was read in the Latin West for several centuries, his ideas on the nature of logic played a prominent role in the debates at medieval universities and hence were a likely source of the distinction between ‘logica utens’ and ‘logica docens’. (shrink)

Legal wiretapping has gained importance in law enforcement along with the development of information and communication technology. Understanding the language of intercepted persons is essential for the success of a police investigation. Hence, intercept interpreters, as we suggest calling them in this article, are hired. Little is known about this specific work at the interface between language and law. With this article, we desire to contribute to closing this gap by focussing particularly on the translational activity. Our study identifies a (...) fragmented field of research due to the difficulty in accessing workers in this specific field who interpret in a highly confidential phase of criminal investigations. The findings, which are drawn from scarce studies and our empirical data derived from an online questionnaire for a pilot study in Switzerland, demonstrate the wide range of the performed activity intercept interpreting. This article is the first to present translational activity from the perspective of intercept interpreters. The activity differs in many ways from interpretation in court hearings or police interviews. Hence, we suggest categorising interlingual intercept interpretation as a translational activity sui generis and—since previous research has not done justice to the ethical and deontological questions that intercept interpretation raises—advocate for further transdisciplinary research in this field of translation. (shrink)

Despite sharing Catholic Social Teaching as their system of morals and both being confronted with marketisation pressures, working conditions at German and Belgian Catholic social service providers of elderly care differ. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach is needed to understand such differences, as interpretation of CST is mediated by local contexts. Working conditions result from interactions shaped by each country’s respective religious, legal and socio-economic contexts, providing players with different levels of discretion and power resources. In Belgium, working conditions (...) at Catholic elderly care providers tend to be better due to a strong Catholic trade union, encompassing labour market regulation and a universal legal system applying to all care providers. Moreover, there is strong interaction between these Catholic care providers and other Catholic institutions. By contrast, German CSSPs, operating as faith-based organisations with their own legal framework in a relatively liberalised and decentralised labour market, are able to use various flexibility practices which put pressure on working conditions. Using such practices is partially justified by the Catholic discourse on charity and altruism, stressing the particular nature of work in the Catholic care sector. Overall, the article demonstrates differences in the local application of CST. It also shows how transnational differences in working conditions at Catholic social service providers are the product of more than just local differences in the interpretation and application of CST principles, being shaped by interactions between a country’s specific religious, legal and socio-economic contexts. (shrink)

O artigo discute como a lacuna deixada pela crítica a uma ética racionalizada, que sustentou o projeto pedagógico moderno, pode encontrar nova justificação. Isso implica na necessidade. De desencadear um processo refletido sobre as formas de relação entre ética e estética, de modo a explicitar os problemas e perspectivas que se apresentam à ética na educação, diante da emergência dos processos de estetização do mundo da vida.

This book addresses two questions that are highly relevant for epistemology and for society: What is ignorance and how should we rationally deal with it? It proposes a new way of thinking about ignorance based on contemporary and historical philosophical theories. In the first part of the book, the author shows that epistemological definitions of ignorance are quite heterogeneous and often address different phenomena under the label "ignorance." She then develops an integrated conception of ignorance that recognizes doxastic, attitudinal, and (...) structural constituents of ignorance. Based on this new conception, she carves out suggestions for dealing with ignorance from the history of philosophy that have largely been overlooked: virtue-theoretic approaches based on Aristotle and Socrates, consequentialist approaches derived from James, and deontological approaches based on Locke, Clifford, and Kant. None of these approaches individually provide a satisfying approach to the task of rationally dealing with ignorance, and so the author develops an alternative maxim-based answer that extends Kant’s maxims of the sensus communis to the issue of ignorance. The last part of the book applies this maxim-based answer to different contexts in medicine and democracies. How Should We Rationally Deal with Ignorance? will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology, political philosophy, feminist philosophy, and the social sciences. (shrink)

The paper examines the perception of nature and of the human-nature relationship which is deeply marked by the collective memory of human’s destroying domination over nature, especially in the Western world. In this segment the positive contribution of Christian theological eco-feminism is of utmost importance, as it discloses and breaks down the prejudice of the model of human’s superiority over nature by means of a critical historical overview of individual religious traditions. The centrepiece here is an analysis of the tensions (...) inherent in contemporary gender and nature religious policy and the implication of theological eco-feminist ethics of interdependence in everyday life and in understanding the identity of women and nature from this perspective. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a shift in epistemological studies of intellectual self-trust or epistemic self-trust: intellectual self-trust is not merely epistemologists’ tool for silencing epistemic skepticism or doubt, it is recognized as a disposition of individuals and collectives interesting in its own rights. In this exploratory article I focus on a particular type of intellectual self-trust—collective intellectual self-trust—and I examine which features make for valuable or pernicious collective intellectual self-trust. From accounts of the value of individual intellectual self-trust I take (...) three frameworks for evaluating collective intellectual self-trust: an epistemically consequentialist, a virtue-theoretic and a prudential/pragmatic framework (§2). Then I introduce collective intellectual self-trust (§3). Against this background I explain what is distinctive of valuable collective intellectual self-trust (§4) and pernicious collective intellectual self-trust (§5) within the three frameworks. I close by discussing the relation between the three frameworks and argue that evaluating intellectual self-trust requires a multi-perspectival approach constituted by the three frameworks. (shrink)

The paper comments on David Rosenthal’s claim that saying “p” is performance-conditionally equivalent to saying “I believe that p”. It is argued, by way of counterexamples, that the proposed performance-conditional equivalence does not hold in this generality. The paper further proposes that avowal expressivism gives necessary conditions for the performance-conditional equivalence: it holds only if the speaker’s utterance of “p” is a non-explicit expressive act expressive of the belief that p and the utterance of “I believe that p” is an (...) explicit expressive act expressive of the very same belief. If that is correct, the performance-conditional equivalence thesis provides an argument against Rosenthal’s preferred avowal descriptivism and in favor of avowal expressivism. (shrink)

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Tourette Syndrome (TS) present as distinct conditions clinically; however, comorbidity and inhibitory control deficits have been proposed for both. Whilst such deficits have been studied widely within clinical populations, findings are mixed—partly due to comorbidity and/or medication effects—and studies have rarely distinguished between subtypes of the disorders. Studies in the general population are sparse. Using a continuity approach, the present study examined (i) the relationships between inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive aspects of ADHD and TS-like behaviors in (...) the general population, and (ii) their unique associations with automatic and executive inhibitory control, as well as (iii) yawning (a proposed behavioral model of TS). One hundred and thirty-eight participants completed self-report measures for ADHD and TS-like behaviors as well as yawning, and a conditioned inhibition task to assess automatic inhibition. A sub-sample of fifty-four participants completed three executive inhibition tasks. An exploratory factor analysis of the TS behavior checklist supported a distinction between phonic and motor like pure TS behaviors. Whilst hyperactive/impulsive aspects of ADHD were associated with increased pure and compulsive TS-like behaviors, inattention in isolation was related to reduced obsessive-compulsive TS-like behaviors. TS-like behaviors were associated with yawning during situations of inactivity, and specifically motor TS was related to yawning during stress. Phonic TS and inattention aspects of ADHD were associated with yawning during concentration/activity. Whilst executive interference control deficits were linked to hyperactive/impulsive ADHD-like behaviors, this was not the case for inattentive ADHD or TS-like behaviors, which instead related to increased performance on some measures. No associations were observed for automatic conditioned inhibition. (shrink)

Divisions of the sciences have been popular objects of study ever since antiquity. One reason for this esteem might be their potential to reveal in a succinct manner how scholars, schools or entire societies thought about the body of knowledge available at their time and its specific structure. However, what do classifications tell us about the pleasures of knowledge? Occasionally, quite a lot, particularly in a setting where the acquisition of knowledge is considered to be the only path leading to (...) the pleasures of ultimate happiness. This is the case for al-Fārābī, who is at the center of this paper. He is particularly interesting for a study such as this because he actually does believe that humanity’s final goal consists in the attainment of happiness through the acquisition of knowledge; and he wrote several treatises, not only on the classification of the sciences as such, but also on the underlying epistemological reasons for this division. Thus he offers excellent insight into a 10th-centu... (shrink)