Jürgen Osterhammel’s book, first published in 1998 and now updated and translated from the original German, is a masterful survey of travel literature on and theoretical treatments of Asia by Europ...

It should be hardly surprising to discover that eighteenth-century European perspectives of other cultures were shaped to a large extent by concerns internal to European political life. Objective or unprejudiced accounts of non-European cultures are rarely found among travellers, missionaries, and philosophers of the time. While the insights of Enlightenment political thinkers on the non-European world may shed little light on the cultures being commented upon, they are useful for assessing the nature of the Enlightenment's engagement with cultural traditions external (...) to Europe. In particular, Enlightenment conceptions of China were extremely varied and reflective of the debates between Enlightenment thinkers, especially on the proper relation between religion and politics. I shall argue that Montesquieu's account of Confucianism in The Spirit of the Laws (De l’esprit des lois, first published in 1748) was in part influenced by his critique of Bayle's position on the role of religion in society as expounded in his Various Thoughts on the Comet (Pensées diverses sur la comète, published in 1682). While Montesquieu's account and assessment of Chinese thought and culture are “Eurocentric,” his evaluation of Confucianism nevertheless arises from a considered philosophical position on religion and politics. (shrink)

The chapters in is collection examine various aspects of JJ Rousseau's work as it relates to the concept of desire.

This article addresses questions concerning Enlightenment universalism and cultural diversity by focusing on the views of China held by Pierre Bayle and the Baron de Montesquieu. In contrast to the characterizations of Enlightenment thought as insufficiently attentive to cultural diversity and as providing pretexts for imposing European values on non-European cultures, recent scholarship has sought to uncouple Enlightenment thought from imperialism and colonialism. An examination of the perspectives, positive and negative, of Bayle and Montesquieu on China suggests that Enlightenment thinkers (...) attempted to reconcile ethical universalism and cultural diversity, but also shows the limitations of such attempts. Thus, while dismissals of Enlightenment thought as universalistic and even imperialistic fail to consider Bayle’s and Montesquieu’s subtle engagements with Chinese culture, their accounts of China arguably fall short of being robust cross-cultural or anti-colonial perspectives. (shrink)

Résultat très attendu d'un colloque organisé en juin 2012 auquel il emprunte son titre, Genre et jeux vidéo rassemble les contributions de quelques quatorze auteur-e-s de différentes disciplines et nationalités. Dirigé par Fanny Lignon, cet ouvrage pionnier met à la disposition du public francophone un premier bilan des travaux réalisés sur un sujet bien souvent déconsidéré dans le champ universitaire car situé à l'intersection de domaines de recherche à faible légitimité. L'ouvrage se divise...

Volume 34, Issue 8, December 2020, Page 1591-1607.

Ces deux ouvrages, publiés en 2004 à Paris, sont dirigés par Ingrid Galster. Professeur de Littérature française, espagnole et hispano-américaine à l’Universität Paderborn (Allemagne), elle a consacré une grande partie de ses recherches à l’impact de l’ouvrage de Simone de Beauvoir dans le contexte allemand ; elle est aussi l’auteur de nombreux textes sur Jean-Paul Sartre. Les deux livres se situent dans les commémorations du cinquantenaire de la publication du Deuxième Sexe. Le premier ouvra...

Volume 24, Issue 6, September 2019, Page 676-679.

Ces deux ouvrages, publiés en 2004 à Paris, sont dirigés par Ingrid Galster. Professeur de Littérature française, espagnole et hispano-américaine à l’Universität Paderborn (Allemagne), elle a consacré une grande partie de ses recherches à l’impact de l’ouvrage de Simone de Beauvoir dans le contexte allemand ; elle est aussi l’auteur de nombreux textes sur Jean-Paul Sartre. Les deux livres se situent dans les commémorations du cinquantenaire de la publication du Deuxième Sexe. Le premier ouvra...

La figure et l’œuvre de Françoise d’Aubigné, veuve Scarron et marquise de Maintenon, se sont trouvées longtemps prisonnières des mythes qu’ont inspirés dès le xviie siècle la vie romanesque et le destin exceptionnel de l’épouse morganatique du Roi-Soleil. La Palatine, Saint-Simon, Michelet ont bâti la légende noire, les Dames de Saint-Louis, Mme de Caylus et Mlle d’Aumale, puis La Beaumelle en ont édifié l’hagiographie, Voltaire et Sainte-Beuve tracé des portraits plus nuancés, mais insuffisa...

It is shown that the Hilbert-Bernays-Quine principle of identity of indiscernibles applies uniformly to all the contentious cases of symmetries in physics, including permutation symmetry in classical and quantum mechanics. It follows that there is no special problem with the notion of objecthood in physics. Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason is considered as well; this too applies uniformly. But given the new principle of identity, it no longer implies that space, or atoms, are unreal.

This paper examines what agents should do when others fail to comply with their responsibilities to prevent dangerous climate change. It distinguishes between six different possible responses to noncompliance. These include what I term (1) 'target modification' (watering down the extent to which we seek to prevent climate change), (2) ‘responsibility reallocation’ (reassigning responsibilities to other duty bearers), (3) ‘burden shifting I’ (allowing duty bearers to implement policies which impose unjust burdens on others, (4) 'burden shifting II’ (allowing some to (...) protect peoples rights in ways which impose otherwise unjustified burdens on the duty bearers, (5) 'compromising moral ideals' (permitting agents to compromise non-justice ideals that they are otherwise bound by); and (6) ‘promoting compliance (implementing policies and creating institutions which reduce noncompliance). It concludes by outlining a methodological framework for evaluating these options, and by setting out my tentative and provisional evaluation of which responses are the least bad. (shrink)

I argue that it is rational for a person to believe the conjunction of her beliefs. This involves responding to the Lottery and Preface Paradoxes. In addition, I suggest that in normal circumstances, what it is to believe a conjunction just is to believe its conjuncts.

The paper defends a view of structural realism similar to that of French and Ladyman, although it differs from theirs in an important respect: I do not take indistinguishabiity of particles in quantum mechanics to have the significance they think it has. It also differs from Cao's view of structural realism, criticized in my "Critical Notice: Cao's `The Conceptual Development of 20th Century Field Theories".

I survey a number of views about how we can obtain knowledge of modal propositions, propositions about necessity and possibility. One major approach is that whether a proposition or state of affairs is conceivable tells us something about whether it is possible. I examine two quite different positions that fall under this rubric, those of Yablo and Chalmers. One problem for this approach is the existence of necessary a posteriori truths and I deal with some of the ways in which (...) these authors respond to the problem, including the use of two-dimensional modal semantics. Conventionalism about modality offers a complementary approach to modal epistemology, prompting us to identify our knowledge of modal truths with our mastery of linguistic or conceptual conventions. Finally, I discuss an approach to modal epistemology deriving from David Lewis's work that seeks to identify structural features of the modal space over which necessity and possibility are defined. (shrink)

Interventions that are designed to stem plagiarism do not always override the motivation of individuals to cheat and, therefore, may not diminish misconduct. To inform more effective approaches, we conducted a systematic review to clarify the psychological causes of plagiarism. This review of 83 empirical papers showed that a specific blend of circumstances may foster plagiarism: an emphasis on competition and success rather than development and cooperation coupled with impaired resilience, limited confidence, impulsive tendencies, and biased cognitions. Fortunately, whenever students (...) feel their life and studies align to their future aspirations, many of these circumstances tend to dissipate. (shrink)

Empirical research on human–robot interaction has demonstrated how humans tend to react to social robots with empathic responses and moral behavior. How should we ethically evaluate such responses to robots? Are people wrong to treat non-sentient artefacts as moral patients since this rests on anthropomorphism and ‘over-identification’ —or correct since spontaneous moral intuition and behavior toward nonhumans is indicative for moral patienthood, such that social robots become our ‘Others’?. In this research paper, I weave extant HRI studies that demonstrate empathic (...) responses toward robots with the recent debate on moral status for robots, on which the ethical evaluation of moral behavior toward them is dependent. Patienthood for robots has standardly been thought to obtain on some intrinsic ground, such as being sentient, conscious, or having interest. But since these attempts neglect moral experience and are curbed by epistemic difficulties, I take inspiration from Coeckelbergh and Gunkel’s ‘relational approach’ to explore an alternative way of accounting for robot patienthood based on extrinsic premises. Based on the ethics of Danish theologian K. E. Løgstrup I argue that empathic responses can be interpreted as sovereign expressions of life and that these expressions benefit human subjects—even if they emerge from social interaction afforded by robots we have anthropomorphized. I ultimately develop an argument in defense of treating robots as moral patients. (shrink)

A heuristic comparison is made of relativistic and non-relativistic quantum theory. To this end the Segal approach is described for the non-specialist. The significance of antimatter to the local and microcausal properties of the fields is laid bare. The fundamental difference between relativistic and non-relativistic (complex) fields is traced to the existence of two kinds of complex numbers in the relativistic case. Their relation to covariant and Newton-Wigner locality is formulated.

Many philosophers accept a ‘layered’ world‐view according to which the facts about the higher ontological levels supervene on the facts about the lower levels. Advocates of such views often have in mind a version of atomism, according to which there is a fundamental level of indivisible objects known as simples or atoms upon whose spatiotemporal locations and intrinsic properties everything at the higher levels supervenes.1 Some, however, accept the possibility of ‘gunk’ worlds in which there are parts ‘all the way (...) down’ such that there are no simples and insofar as composite objects exist these are composed of smaller objects which in turn are composed of smaller objects, and so on. It may nonetheless still be claimed that the facts about each ontological level supervene on the facts about the lower levels. (shrink)

The Moral Conscience principle claims that a conflict between the demands of a law and the demands of an individual’s sincere moral conscience provides her with a defeasible moral entitlement to an exemption. This chapter argues that this principle is vulnerable to an unfairness objection. There is nothing special about moral conscience that would justify granting an exemption, it claims, that is not shared by a variety of non-moral projects. Thus, there is no principled moral reason for a defeasible entitlement (...) to moral conscience-based exemptions that is not an equally good reason for a defeasible entitlement to non-moral project-based exemptions. Since the chapter assumes that people are not defeasibly entitled to such project-based exemptions, it advocates scepticism about the Moral Conscience principle. (shrink)

We study the handicap principle in terms of the Sir Philip Sidney game. The handicap principle asserts that cost is required to allow for honest signalling in the face of conflicts of interest. We show that the significance of the handicap principle can be challenged from two new directions. Firstly, both the costly signalling equilibrium and certain states of no communication are stable under the replicator dynamics ; however, the latter states are more likely in cases where honest signalling should (...) apply. Secondly, we prove the existence and stability of polymorphisms where players mix between being honest and being deceptive and where signalling costs can be very low. Neither the polymorphisms nor the states of no communication are evolutionarily stable, but they turn out to be more important for standard evolutionary dynamics than the costly signalling equilibrium. (shrink)

We should be suspicious of the idea that experiencing pain could enable animals to trade off different motivations in a common currency. It is not even clear that humans have a common motivational currency reflected in evaluative experience. Instead, pain may capture attention, inhibiting attention to competing motivations and needs, thereby making genuine trade-offs harder. Our criteria for pain in invertebrates should be part of a more subtle theory of the relationship between pain and decision-making.

Towards a Posthuman Theory of Educational Relationality critically reads the intersubjective theories on educational relations and uses a posthuman approach to ascribe agency relationally to humans and nonhumans alike. The book introduces the concept of ‘educational relationality’ and contains examples of nonhuman elements of technology and animals, putting educational relationality and other concepts into context as part of the philosophical investigation. Drawing on educational and posthuman theorists, it answers questions raised in ongoing debates regarding the roles of students and teachers (...) in education, such as the foundations of educational relations and how these can be challenged. The book explores educational relations within the field of philosophy of education. After critically examining intersubjective approaches to theories of educational relations, anthropocentrism and subject-centrism are localized as two problematic aspects. Post-anthropocentrism and intra-relationality are proposed as a theoretical framework, before the book introduces and develops a posthuman theory of educational relations. The analysis is executed through a diffractive reading of intersubjective theories, resulting in five co-concepts: impermanence, uniqueness-as-relationality, proximity, edu-activity, and intelligibility. The analysis provided through educational examples demonstrates the potential of using the proposed theory in everyday practices. Towards a Posthuman Theory of Educational Relationality will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, early childhood education, research methodology and curriculum studies. (shrink)

I address the problem of reconciling environmental holism with the intrinsic value of individual beings. Drawing upon Madhyamaka Buddhism, the later philosophy of Martin Heidegger, and deep ecology, I present a distinctly holistic conception of nature that, nevertheless, retains a commitment to the intrinsic worth of individual beings. I conclude with an examination of the practical implications of this “thing-centered holism” for environmental ethics.