This study explores the social representations of cloning taking in consideration a series of associated emotions and the subjects' level of religiosity. The participants in our study consisted of 356 subjects of different ages and professions. The data collection included four tasks for the subjects to fill in. First, they had to fill in a free task association: starting from the stimulus-word „cloning" they had to associate five words or expressions, and then rank these five words according to their importance. (...) The second task required polarity association for each of the expressions; thus, the subjects had to evaluate them as positive, negative or neutral in relation to „cloning". The third task was a questionnaire evaluating the level of religiosity (28 items). The last task included a list of 35 emotions (positive as well as negative) which subjects had to associate on a scale from 1 to 10 with the bio-medical procedure of cloning. The data analysis was focused on comparing the different groups defined in relation to the level of religiosity, affective polarity, age and level of education. We used the prototipicality technique, developed in the framework of the social representation's theory, in order to identify the elements of the social representations of cloning belonging to the previously mentioned variables. . (shrink)

Adrian Neculau (ed.) Viata cotidianã în communism (Everyday Life in Communism) Polirom, Iaoi, 2005, 367 pages.

Advocates of radical realist theories of legitimacy propose that political legitimation narratives are often void where they show signs of motivated reasoning. In a recent critique of the method, example cases have been put forward in which an analysis and critique of flawed justification narratives seems urgently called for, and yet motivated reasoning is absent. This, critics suggest, should deflate the prominence of motivated reasoning within the radical realism. I argue here that those cases are misconstrued. Motivated reasoning can either (...) be easily identified therein, or the cases are irrelevant to begin with. The issue with realism’s motivated reasoning connection is another: the explanatory direction of fit between epistemic circularity and motivated reasoning. The former explains the normative salience of the latter. Hence, I hope this intervention clarifies a misunderstood and underexplored aspect of contemporary radical realist theory and adds to the contextualisation of the psychology of motivated reasoning within normative social theory more broadly. (shrink)

We argue that narratives are central to the success of historical reconstruction. Narrative explanation involves tracing causal trajectories across time. The construction of narrative, then, often involves postulating relatively speculative causal connections between comparatively well-established events. But speculation is not always idle or harmful: it also aids in overcoming local underdetermination by forming scaffolds from which new evidence becomes relevant. Moreover, as our understanding of the past’s causal milieus become richer, the constraints on narrative plausibility become increasingly strict: a narrative’s (...) admissibility does not turn on mere logical consistency with background data. Finally, narrative explanation and explanation generated by simple, formal models complement one another. Where models often achieve isolation and precision at the cost of simplification and abstraction, narratives can track complex changes in a trajectory over time at the cost of simplicity and precision. In combination both allow us to understand and explain highly complex historical sequences. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, by combining eliminativist and fictionalist approaches toward the sub-personal representational posits of predictive processing, we arrive at an empirically robust and yet metaphysically innocuous cognitive scientific framework. I begin the paper by providing a non-representational account of the five key posits of predictive processing. Then, I motivate a fictionalist approach toward the remaining indispensable representational posits of predictive processing, and explain how representation can play an epistemologically indispensable role within predictive processing explanations without thereby (...) requiring that representation metaphysically exists. Finally, I outline four consequences of accepting this approach and explain why they are beneficial: we arrive at a victory for metaphysical eliminativism in the ‘representation wars’; my account fits with extant empirical practice; my account provides guidance for future research; and, my account provides the beginnings of a response to Mark Sprevak’s IBE problem for fictionalist approaches toward sub-personal representation. (shrink)

A. W. Moore argues in this bold, unusual, and ambitious book that it is possible to think about the world from no point of view. His argument involves discussion of a very wide range of fundamental philosophical issues, including the nature of persons, the subject-matter of mathematics, realism and anti-realism, value, the inexpressible, and God. The result is a powerful critique of our own finitude.

I develop an account of the relationship between aesthetics and knowledge, focusing on scientific practice. Cognitivists infer from ‘partial sensitivity’—aesthetic appreciation partly depends on doxastic states—to ‘factivity’, the idea that the truth or otherwise of those beliefs makes a difference to aesthetic appreciation. Rejecting factivity, I develop a notion of ‘epistemic engagement’: partaking genuinely in a knowledge-directed process of coming to epistemic judgements, and suggest that this better accommodates the relationship between the aesthetic and the epistemic. Scientific training (and other (...) knowledge-directed activities), I argue, involves ‘attunement’: the co-option of aesthetic judgements towards epistemic ends. Thus, the connection between aesthetic appreciation and knowledge is psychological and contingent. This view has consequences for the warrant of aesthetic judgement in science, namely, the locus of justification is those processes of attunement, not the aesthetic judgements themselves. (shrink)

Geologists, Paleontologists and other historical scientists are frequently concerned with narrative explanations targeting single cases. I show that two distinct explanatory strategies are employed in narratives, simple and complex. A simple narrative has minimal causal detail and is embedded in a regularity, whereas a complex narrative is more detailed and not embedded. The distinction is illustrated through two case studies: the ‘snowball earth’ explanation of Neoproterozoic glaciation and recent attempts to explain gigantism in Sauropods. This distinction is revelatory of historical (...) science. I argue that at least sometimes which strategy is appropriate is not a pragmatic issue, but turns on the nature of the target. Moreover, the distinction reveals a counterintuitive pattern of progress in some historical explanation: shifting from simple to complex. Sometimes, historical scientists rightly abandon simple, unified explanations in favour of disunified, complex narratives. Finally I compare narrative and mechanistic explanation, arguing that mechanistic approaches are inappropriate for complex narrative explanations. (shrink)

Does political realism have anything to contribute to the debates about migration in normative political theory? Anything well-established ‘moralist’ theories do not already acknowledge, that is? Addressing Jaggar’s (_Aristotelian Soc Suppl_ Vol. XCIV, pp. 87–113, 2020) and Finlayson’s (_Aristotelian Soc Suppl_ Vol. XCIV, pp. 115–139, 2020) critical intercessions into contemporary discourse about migration I argue that a political realist approach to the theory of migration faces what I call the ‘surplus challenge’: realists supposedly have no normative surplus over (liberal) cosmopolitan (...) and nationalist moralist approaches. This nothing-more-to-add narrative is a common argument against the possibility and integrity of political realism (as seen in, _inter alia_, Leader-Maynard and Worsnip in _Ethics_ 128(4), pp. 756–787, 2018). I show how it misconstrues the realist agenda. Finlayson, on the other hand, paints the realist intervention as primarily about paying closer attention to colonialism’s long legacy. A properly radical intrusion, however, addresses the unchecked and unwarranted, overbearing normative power of moral principles. I will conclude that for the realist, shaking up the discipline will not come as easy as pointing at some overly historicised facts. However, and despite this, the realist intervention rightly problematises contemporary philosophy of migration for its moral normativism. A radical realist approach to issues of migration, which unmasks the unjustified ‘microphysics’ political power hiding behind normative veneers, is a properly cataclysmic intrusion and the right way forward. (shrink)

Abstract‘Behavioural modernity’ isn’t what it used to be. Once conceived as an integrated package of traits demarcated by a clear archaeological signal in a specific time and place, it is now disparate, archaeologically equivocal, and temporally and spatially spread. In this paper we trace behavioural modernity’s empirical and theoretical developments over the last three decades, as surprising discoveries in the material record, as well the reappraisal of old evidence, drove increasingly sophisticated demographic, social and cultural models of behavioural modernity. We (...) argue, however, that some approaches to identifying and categorizing modernity have not kept up with this new picture. This is due to what we term ‘Rubicon expectations’: classificatory and interpretive practices which look for or assume clear demarcations in behavioural and cultural processes. We develop a philosophical account of ‘investigative disintegration’ to capture how our understanding of behavioural modernity has changed, and how Rubicon-based practices have become inadequate. Disintegration, in the form we analyse, occurs when scientists’ conception of a phenomenon shifts sufficiently to reshape an investigation’s epistemic structure. For behavioural modernity, the explanatory weight which once lay on identifying ‘switch-points’ in the innate suite of hominin cognitive capacities, lies now in understanding the social and demographic environments that were capable of sustaining and nourishing more complex material cultures. Finally, we argue that the phenomenon itself has not disintegrated to the point that we are left with no interesting explanandum: for all its mosaic, disparate nature, there are still good reasons for behavioural modernity to retain its central place in investigation of our species' origins. (shrink)

I introduce and defend the notion of a cognitive account of the sense of ownership. A cognitive account of the sense of ownership holds that one experiences something as one's own only if one thinks of something as one's own. By contrast, a phenomenal account of the sense of ownership holds that one can experience something as one's own without thinking about anything as one's own. I argue that we have no reason to favour phenomenal accounts over cognitive accounts, that (...) cognitive accounts are plausible given that much of our mental activity has unnoticed effects on our mental life, and that certain illusory experiences of body ownership sometimes described as thought-independent may be best explained as imaginative perceptual experiences. (shrink)

Does the existence of body representations undermine the explanatory role of the body? Or do certain types of representation depend so closely upon the body that their involvement in a cognitive task implicates the body itself? In the introduction of this special issue we explore lines of tension and complement that might hold between the notions of embodiment and body representations, which remain too often neglected or obscure. To do so, we distinguish two conceptions of embodiment that either put weight (...) on the explanatory role of the body itself or body representations. We further analyse how and to what extent body representations can be said to be embodied. Finally, we give an overview of the full volume articulated around foundational issues (How should we define the notion of embodiment? To what extent and in what sense is embodiment compatible with representationalism? To what extent and in what sense are sensorimotor approaches similar to behaviourism?) and their applications in several cognitive domains (perception, concepts, selfhood, social cognition). (shrink)

There remains no consensus among social scientists as to how to measure and understand forms of information deprivation such as misinformation. Machine learning and statistical analyses of information deprivation typically contain problematic operationalizations which are too often biased towards epistemic elites' conceptions that can undermine their empirical adequacy. A mature science of information deprivation should include considerable citizen involvement that is sensitive to the value-ladenness of information quality and that doing so may improve the predictive and explanatory power of extant (...) models. (shrink)

How can one ‘see’ the operationalization of contemporary visual culture, given the imperceptibility and apparent automation of so many processes and dimensions of visuality? Seeing – as a position from a singular mode of observation – has become problematic since many visual elements, techniques, and forms of observing are highly distributed through data practices of collection, analysis and prediction. Such practices are subtended by visual cultural techniques that are grounded in the development of image collections, image formatting and hardware design. (...) In this article, we analyze recent transformations in forms of prediction and data analytics associated with spectacular performances of computation. We analyze how transformations in the collection and accumulation of images as ensembles by platforms have a qualitative and material effect on the emergent sociotechnicality of platform ‘life’ and ‘perception’. Reconstructing the visual transformations that allow artificial intelligence assemblages to operate allows some sense of their heteronomous materiality and contingency. (shrink)

Despite wide recognition that speculation is critical for successful science, philosophers have attended little to it. When they have, speculation has been characterized in narrowly epistemic terms: a hypothesis is speculative due to its (lack of) evidential support. These ‘evidence-first’ accounts provide little guidance for what makes speculation productive or egregious, nor how to foster the former while avoiding the latter. I examine how scientists discuss speculation and identify various functions speculations play. On this basis, I develop a ‘function-first’ account (...) of speculation. This analysis grounds a richer discussion of when speculation is egregious and when it is productive, based in both fine-grained analysis of the speculation’s purpose, and what I call the ‘epistemic situation’ scientists face. (shrink)

The comparative method grants epistemic access to the biological past. Comparing lineages provides empirical traction on both hypotheses about particular lineages and models of trait evolution. Understanding this evidential role is important. Although philosophers have recently turned their attention to relations of descent, little work exists exploring the status of evidence from convergences. I argue that, where they exist, convergences play a central role in the confirmation of adaptive hypotheses. I focus on ‘analogous inferences’, show how such inferences ought to (...) be analysed and suggest three methods for strengthening their evidential weight. 1 Introduction2 Analogous Inferences2.1 Adaptive explanations and analogies2.2 Analogous inferences2.3 Scope, grain, and specificity3 Parallel Modelling, Integrated Explanations, and Convergent Modelling3.1 Parallel modelling3.2 Integrated explanations3.1 Convergent modelling4 Conclusion. (shrink)

We need modal imagination in order to extend our conception of reality - and, in particular, of human beings - beyond our immediate experience in the indexical present; and we need to do this in order to preserve the significance of human interaction. To make this leap of imagination successfully is to achieve not only insight but also an impartial perspective on our own and others' inner states. This perspective is a necessary condition of experiencing compassion for others. This is (...) the primary thesis I will try to defend in this discussion. (shrink)

Our epistemic access to the past is infamously patchy: historical information degrades and disappears and bygone eras are often beyond the reach of repeatable experiments. However, historical scientists have been remarkably successful at uncovering and explaining the past. I argue that part of this success is explained by the exploitation of dependencies between historical events, entities, and processes. For instance, if sauropod dinosaurs were hot blooded, they must have been gluttons; the high-energy demands of endothermy restrict sauropod grazing strategies. Understanding (...) such dependencies extends our reach into the past in spite of incomplete data. In addition, this serves as a counterexample to two accounts of method in the historical sciences. By one, historical science proceeds by identifying ‘smoking guns’: traces that discriminate between live hypotheses. By the other, historical hypotheses are supported by consilience: the convergence of independent lines of evidence. However, testing for ‘coherency’ between past hypotheses also plays a critical role in historical confirmation. Just as historical scientists exploit dependencies between past entities and present entities to infer what the past was like, they also exploit dependencies between past entities themselves. I do not suggest that archetypical historical science proceeds in this manner. Rather, the lesson I draw is that historical methodology cannot be characterized as archetypically relying on one method or another. Historical science is at base opportunistic, and is resistant to unitary analyses. 1 Introduction2 Snowballs and Explosions: The Basic Idea3 Were Sauropods Endothermic?4 Dependent Entities and Interdependent Explanations5 Smoking Guns and Consilience. (shrink)

Paleobiologists often provide simple narratives to explain complex, contingent episodes. These narratives are sometimes ‘one-shot hypotheses’ which are treated as being mutually exclusive with other possible explanations of the target episode, and are thus extended to accommodate as much about the episode as possible. I argue that a provisional preference for such hypotheses provides two kinds of productive scaffolding. First, they generate ‘hypothetical difference-makers’: one-shot hypotheses highlight and isolate empirically tractable dependencies between variables. Second, investigations of hypothetical difference-makers provision explanatory (...) resources, the ‘raw materials’ for constructing more complex—and likely more adequate—explanations. Provisional preferences for simple, one-shot hypotheses in historical science, then, is defeasibly justified on indirect—strategic—grounds. My argument is made in reference to recent developments regarding the K–Pg extinction. (shrink)

An understanding of the factors behind the evolution of multicellularity is one of today’s frontiers in evolutionary biology. This is because multicellular organisms are made of one subset of cells with the capacity to transmit genes to the next generation and another subset responsible for maintaining the functionality of the organism, but incapable of transmitting genes to the next generation. The question arises: why do somatic cells sacrifice their lives for the sake of germline cells? How is germ/soma separation maintained? (...) One conventional answer refers to inclusive fitness theory, according to which somatic cells sacrifice themselves altruistically, because in so doing they enhance the transmission of their genes by virtue of their genetic relatedness to germline cells. In the present article we will argue that this explanation ignores the key role of policing mechanisms in maintaining the germ/soma divide. Based on the pervasiveness of the latter, we argue that the role of altruistic mechanisms in the evolution of multicellularity is limited and that our understanding of this evolution must be enriched through the consideration of coercion mechanisms. (shrink)

[A. W. Moore] Criteria of ineffability are presented which, it is claimed, preclude the possibility of truths that are ineffable, but not the possibility of other things that are ineffable—not even the possibility of other things that are non-trivially ineffable. Specifically, they do not preclude the possibility of states of understanding that are ineffable. This, it is argued, allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and those who adopt the new (...) reading recently championed by Cora Diamond, James Conant, and others. By maintaining that what the nonsense in the Tractatus is supposed to convey is ineffable understanding, rather than ineffable truth, we can do considerable justice to each of these readings. We can also do considerable justice to the Tractatus. /// [Peter Sullivan] Moore proposes to cut between 'traditional' and 'new' approaches to the Tractatus, suggesting that Wittgenstein's intention is to convey, through the knowing use of nonsense, ineffable understanding. I argue, first, that there is indeed room for a proposal of Moore's general kind. Secondly, though, I question whether Moore's actual proposal is not more in tune with Wittgenstein's later thought than with the attitude of the Tractatus. (shrink)

Political realists have argued that ‘the political’ is an autonomous domain with its own distinctive concepts, distinctive methodology, and distinctive ‘source of normativity’. I here explore the metanormative commitments of realism (of the radical realist branch, in particular) and question the viability of exploring the ontology of the normative altogether. I argue that the escape into the metanormative realm was something of a wrong turn within the realism debates – an intellectual error. My central argument, building on recent metatheoretical work (...) on normativity, is meant to discredit the sheer possibility of metanormative distinctness. If realists can neither prove metanormative, nor traditional, nor methodological distinctness, there is a valid question as to its standing. I speculate, perhaps realism is little more than a new semantic label for ‘continental’ practices of social analysis as they leak into the analytic tradition. But then again it can be argued that most contemporary continental thought, and certainly much of what passes as critical theory these days, is thoroughly moralist, anti-positivist, and postmodern, and those sentiments are not shared by radical realists, who are, or so I’ll argue, far more faithful to the modernist tradition of social theory. (shrink)

Debate about the epistemic prowess of historical science has focused on local underdetermination problems generated by a lack of historical data; the prevalence of information loss over geological time, and the capacities of scientists to mitigate it. Drawing on Leonelli’s recent distinction between ‘phenomena-time’ and ‘data-time’ I argue that factors like data generation, curation and management significantly complexifies and undermines this: underdetermination is a bad way of framing the challenges historical scientists face. In doing so, I identify circumstances of epistemic (...) scarcity where underdetermination problems are particularly salient, and discuss cases where legacy data—data generated using differing technologies and systems of practice—are drawn upon to overcome underdetermination. This suggests that one source of overcoming underdetermination is our knowledge of science’s past. Further, data-time makes agnostic positions about the epistemic fortunes of scientists working under epistemic scarcity more plausible. But agnosticism seems to leave philosophers without much normative grip. So, I sketch an alternative approach: focusing on the strategies scientists adopt to maximize their epistemic power in light of the resources available to them. (shrink)

Most moral theories share certain features in common with other theories. They consist of a set of propositions that are universal, general, and hence impartial. The propositions that constitute a typical moral theory are (1) universal, in that they apply to all subjects designated as within their scope. They are (2) general, in that they include no proper names or definite descriptions. They are therefore (3) impartial, in that they accord no special privilege to any particular agent's situation which cannot (...) be justified under (2) and (3). These three features do not distinguish moral theories from other theories, nor indeed from most general categorical propositions we assert. Yet, in recent years, these features of moral theories have been the target of a certain concerted and sustained criticism, namely, that to be committed to such a moral theory, or to aspire to act in accordance with its requirements, results in what has come to be known as moral alienation. Moral alienation, according to this criticism, consists in (i) viewing one's ground projects from an impersonal, "moral point of view" engendered by one's acceptance of the theory; (ii) being prepared to sacrifice these projects to the requirements of moral principle; and (iii) making such a sacrifice specifically and self-consciously in order to conform to these requirements. Moral alienation is said to manifest itself in one (or both) of two ways, depending on the nature of the project thus susceptible to sacrifice. One may be alienated from oneself, if the project consists of tastes, convictions, or aspirations that are centrally definitive of one's self. In this case one's commitment to the project can be at best conditional on its congruence with one's moral theory. It is claimed that this must make for a rather tepid and unenthusiastic commitment indeed. Alternatively, one may be alienated from others, if the project is an interpersonal relationship such as a friendship, marriage, or collegial relationship. In this case one's responses to the other are motivated by one's awareness of what one's moral theory requires. It is claimed that this obstructs a genuine and unmediated emotional response to the other as such. My aim here will be to argue that this very compelling criticism - call it the moral-alienation criticism - is nevertheless misdirected. The real culprit is not any particular moral theory, but rather a certain familiar personality type that may or may not adopt it. (shrink)

Son vastas y múltiples las dimensiones éticas del uso de la energía (dimensiones ético-políticas, poliéticas, para quienes pensamos que hay continuidad entre ética y política). Tras esbozar un mapa de este campo de problemas, nos centramos en las dificultades que afrontan las transiciones energéticas y argumentamos que solo encarando una profunda transformación de las formas de producción y los modos de vida se podrían evitar, quizá, los escenarios peores. Las técnicas humildes deberían desplegarse en marcos de ecofeminismo de subsistencia o (...) ecosocialismo descalzo. (shrink)

The Covid‐19 crisis has accelerated a trend toward burnout in health care workers, making starkly clear that burnout is especially likely when providing health care is not only stressful and sad but emotionally alienating; in such situations, there is no mental space for clinicians to experience authentic clinical empathy. Engaged curiosity toward each patient is a source of meaning and connection for health care providers, and it protects against sympathetic distress and burnout. In a prolonged crisis like Covid‐19, clinicians provide (...) care out of a sense of duty, especially the duty of nonabandonment. We argue that when duty alone is relied on too heavily, with fear and frustration continually suppressed, the risk of burnout is dramatically increased. Even before Covid‐19, clinicians often worked under dehumanizing and unjust conditions, and rates of burnout were 50 percent for physicians and 33 percent for nurses. The Covid‐19 intensification of burnout can serve as a wake‐up call that the structure of health care needs to be improved if we are to prevent the loss of a whole generation of empathic clinicians. (shrink)

This paper provides and justifies a broader definition of a ‘law-breaking event’ than that adopted by D. Lewis who identifies this concept with the notion of an event that falsifies the laws of nature in his sense of ‘falsification’. It is pointed out that the broader definition is the key to answering C. Ginet’s objection against local miracle compatibilism. It also allows a neutral reconstruction of one of the disagreements underlying the compatibilism debate about the ability to do otherwise, i.e., (...) the disagreement over nomological possibility of alternative action in a deterministic world. Under this reconstruction, neither the incompatibilist nor the compatibilist can take advantage of the concept of a law-breaking event to show that their opponent’s view is false. (shrink)

The scientific investigation of music requires contributions from a diverse array of disciplines. Given the diverse methodologies, interests and research targets of the disciplines involved, we argue that there is a plurality of legitimate research questions about music, necessitating a focus on integration. In light of this we recommend a pluralistic conception of music—that there is no unitary definition divorced from some discipline, research question or context. This has important implications for how the scientific study of music ought to proceed: (...) we show that some definitions are complementary, that is, they reflect different research interests and ought to be retained and, where possible, integrated, while others are antagonistic, they represent real empirical disagreement about music’s nature and how to account for it. We illustrate this in discussion of two related issues: questions about the evolutionary function of music, and questions of the innateness of music. These debates have been, in light of pluralism, misconceived. We suggest that, in both cases, scientists ought to proceed by constructing integrated models which take into account the dynamic interaction between different aspects of music. (shrink)

In our dealings with young children, we often get them to do or think things by arranging their environments in certain ways; by dissembling, simplifying, or ambiguating the facts in answer to their queries; by carefully selecting the states of affairs, behavior of others, and utterances to which they shall be privy. We rightly justify these practices by pointing out a child's malleability, and the necessity of paying close attention to formative influences during its years of growth. This filtering of (...) influences is necessary, we point out, if children are ever to reach a degree of maturity and inner stability that will enable them to understand and cope adequately with the complexities, contradictions, and difficulties of the world from which we now seek to shield them. Thus a child's eventual state of competence, maturity, and autonomy adequately justifies our current practices of manipulation and selection of his environment: such practices are rightly held to be ultimately in the child's best interests as an adult. There is no future state of things with reference to which the Utilitarian night justify his policy of secrecy and manipulation, and in light of which this policy night eventually be dispensed with and commonly validated, in retrospect, as a means to the worthwhile goal of moral maturity. That is, there is no point at which the attitude of the Utilitarian to the rest of the community can develop past the analogous attitude of the parent towards the child; no point at which the Utilitarian might eventually bear to others a relationship of mutual acknowledgement and respect as mature, autonomous, moral adults. The consistent Utilitarian, then, largely regards himself as if he were the only adult in a community of children. (shrink)

Corruption is a more important idea for Hobbes than has been recognized: a state of nature can result from corruption of the people, corruption of counsellors and corruption of legal processes. Hobbes often uses a 'cognitive' conception of corruption — the distortion of mental processes, by faulty reasoning or improper attitudes. Corruption means that citizens think they benefit from sedition, counsellors advise with self-interested rhetoric rather than impartial logic, witnesses lie and judges settle cases by bribes or pity. Although corruption (...) is often thought to involve the pursuit of private gain, Hobbes only talks about corruption in terms of misjudged private gain, where an individual is motivated by his apparent, short-tem self-interest, rather than his real, long- term self-interest. That is why corruption can lead to a state of nature. (shrink)

O privire fugitivă asupra unora dintre religiile lumii antice scoate la iveală faptul că, indiferent de structura sa și de teritoriul în care s-a răspândit, credința într-o viață fără boli și suferințe a fost idealul permanent al omului. Astfel că, alături de nădejdea în viața de apoi, încrederea într-un trai mai bun încă de pe pământ a reprezentat o constată a vieții private și publice. În acest sens, au existat divinități, dar și specialiști, care s-au îngrijit de întreținerea speranțelor oamenilor. (...) „Într-adevăr, cultura indo-europeană cunoștea un singur tip de intelectual, cel care se îngrijea de toate activitățile legate de cuvânt: era preot (cunoscând rugăciunile și formulele rituale), era istoric (știind să povestească tradițiile și istoria străveche a tribului său), era jurist (cunoscând pe de rost formulele dreptului cutumiar), era poet (stăpânind tehnica dificilă a compunerii), era povestitor (știind să recite pentru delectarea auditoriului o cantitate însemnată de texte și tradiții orale), era medic (cunoscând formulele magice vindecătoare)”.24 Cu toată această diversificare, oamenii au așteptat în continuare venirea unui Mântuitor dintr-o altă lume, Care să le vindece bolile, să le ierte păcatele și să le aducă învierea din morți. Acest lucru s-a întâmplat prin Întruparea Fiului lui Dumnezeu „la plinirea vremii” (Galateni 4, 4-5). (shrink)

This paper presents a framework of four types of meaning and understanding in the history of political thought and intellectual history. Previous frameworks have overlooked a whole type of meaning – the type often prioritised by political theorists and philosophers. I call this “extended meaning.” Correcting a wrong turn in philosophy of language in the 1950s, I show how extended meaning has robust intellectual foundations, and I illustrate its value for textual interpreters. Even historians often need extended meaning, for example (...) to help resolve ambiguous passages. So, the main types of meaning are not alternatives: scholars interested in one kind of meaning still need others. This paper thus celebrates both diversity and unity. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against Penelope Maddy's set-theoretic realism by arguing (1) that it is perfectly consistent with mathematical Platonism to deny that there is a fact of the matter concerning statements which are independent of the axioms of set theory, and that (2) denying this accords further that many contemporary Platonists assert that there is a fact of the matter because they are closet foundationalists, and that their brand of foundationalism is in radical conflict with actual mathematical practice.

I sketch a line of thought about consciousness and physics that gives some motivation for the hypothesis that conscious observers deviate—perhaps only very subtly and slightly—from quantum dynamics. Although it is hard to know just how much credence to give this line of thought, it does add motivation for a stronger and more comprehensive programme of quantum experiments involving quantum observers.

When someone thanks someone for something, or advises him against something, or refuses something from him, his action is directed not merely at but to the other. He addresses the other. But is it only actions that exemplify this mode of directedness? This essay argues that it is not.

There has been considerable discussion in the literature of one kind of identity problem that mathematical structuralism faces: the automorphism problem, in which the structure is unable to individuate the mathematical entities in its domain. Shapiro (Philos Math 16(3):285–309, 2008) has partly responded to these concerns. But I argue here that the theory faces an even more serious kind of identity problem, which the theory can’t overcome staying within its remit. I give two examples to make the point.

Ethnic markers are a prominent organizing feature of human society when individuals engage in significant anonymous interactions. However, identifying markers in natural settings is nontrivial. Although ad hoc assignment of markers to groups is widely documented in the ethnographic literature, predicting the membership of individuals based on stylistic variation is less clear. We argue that a more systematic approach is required to satisfy the basic assumptions made in ethnic marker theory. To this end we introduce a three-step ethnographic method to (...) assess the presence, recognition, and transmission of markers of group identity: continual scans, a utilization survey, and a comparative classification task. Applying the method to a study of culturally significant motifs in the South Pacific Island nation of Tonga, we provide evidence that the motif set satisfies basic theoretical assumptions and thus the motifs are likely expressions for social coordination. We also found that the coordinating role of each motif is variable and requires further investigation. (shrink)

This article responds to two problems confronting social and human sciences: how to relate to digital data, inasmuch as it challenges established social science methods; and how to relate to life sciences, insofar as they produce knowledge that impinges on our own ways of knowing. In a case study of proteomics, we explore how digital devices grapple with large-scale multiples – of molecules, databases, machines and people. We analyse one particular visual device, a cluster-heatmap, produced by scientists by mining data (...) from a large number of experiments on human blood plasma proteins. These proteins make up a myriad multiple whose identity shifts in many ways. Rather than displaying data about proteins, the heatmap constructs a view of the differences and similarities between experiments. We find this attempt to construct a view on many things at once instructive in thinking about multiples more generally. Instead of flattening molecular ‘life itself’, this visual device superimposes layers of digital devices and techniques from a wide variety of disciplines. This layering suggests a different way of relating to the life sciences more generally: rather than what they know, how they know might be of use to social and human sciences when attending to multiplicities. (shrink)

This edited collection presents the latest cutting-edge research in the philosophy and cognitive science of temporal illusions. Illusion and error have long been important points of entry for both philosophical and psychological approaches to understanding the mind. Temporal illusions, specifically, concern a fundamental feature of lived experience, temporality, and its relation to a fundamental feature of the world, time, thus providing invaluable insight into investigations of the mind and its relationship with the world. The existence of temporal illusions crucially challenges (...) the naïve assumption that we can simply infer the temporal nature of the world from experience. This anthology gathers eighteen original papers from current leading researchers in this subject, covering four broad and interdisciplinary topics: illusions of temporal passage, illusions and duration, illusions of temporal order and simultaneity, and the relationship between temporal illusions and the cognitive representation of time. (shrink)

Abstract Nancy Fraser raises serious doubts about the critical potential of identity theories of recognition on the ground that they encourage the reduction of personal identity to cultural identity. Based on a comparative analysis of Charles Taylor's and Axel Honneth's theories of recognition, this paper argues that Fraser's critique is justified with respect to some aspects of Taylor's theory of identity, but not with respect to his conception of recognition, or to Honneth's conception of both identity and recognition. Taylor's theory (...) of identity recognition is vulnerable to Fraser's critique because under certain conditions of pathological socialization it cannot prevent the normative subordination of strong evaluation to whatever dominant goods are acquired through acculturation. Honneth's theory of identity recognition overcomes this normative weakness in three ways. First, Honneth differentiates between three types of self-relation that cannot be reduced to cultural identity. Second, he operates with a mixed, attributive?responsive model of recognition that normatively underwrites all these types of self-relation. Third, he makes the condition of reciprocity in recognition the criterion for successful self-realization that enables one to distinguish between misrecognition and non-normative experiences of human suffering. (shrink)

It is generally acknowledged that Kant's political philosophy stands on a par with the great works of the Western liberal tradition. It is also a matter of agreement that the rational principles on which it rests represent an adequate philosophical expression of the progressive agenda that was inaugurated by the Enlightenment and fulfilled, with varying degrees of success, by the French Revolution. Yet Kant's philosophical position is ambiguous when it comes to evaluating that momentous event in modern history. We know, (...) from anecdotal evidence, some surviving letters, several cryptic references in his published works, as well as a number of posthumously published reflections, that Kant was enthusiastic about and strongly approved of the changes that were taking place in France at the time. He certainly condemned, in strong and unequivocal terms, the execution of Louis XVI. But this did not translate into a repudiation of his support for the revolution. And he seems to have found even in this case mitigating circumstances that explained the revolutionaries' decision to execute the monarch, thus in fact excusing their action. Moreover, he argued that all post-revolutionary governments ought to command the same kind of loyalty from their subjects as the ones they replaced, which appears to justify Kant's contention in the Idea for a Universal History that political violence can be a vehicle of progress. Furthermore, in the Contest of Faculties Kant went so far as to identify in the enthusiastic response of the ‘spectators’ to the French Revolution a clear sign of the moral disposition of humankind. (shrink)