In recent years, interest in pre-reflective self-consciousness has increased significantly. One of the central points of inquiry is whether pre-reflective self-consciousness ubiquitously accompanies phenomenal consciousness. This paper explores a phenomenological justification for the thesis that pre-reflective self-consciousness ubiquitously accompanies phenomenal consciousness. Allegedly, the ubiquity of pre-reflective self-consciousness can be proved on the basis of phenomenological description. The aim of this paper is to develop a new objection against this justification of the ubiquity thesis.

The distinction between causal role and selected effect functions is typically framed in terms of their respective explanatory roles. However, much of the controversy over functions in genomics takes place in an investigative, not an explanatory context. Specifically, the process of component-driven functional investigation begins with the designation of some genetic or epigenetic element as functional —i.e. not junk— because it possesses properties that, arguably, suggest some biologically interesting organismal effect. The investigative process then proceeds, in a bottom-up fashion, to (...) search for those effects. I argue that this process encounters a problem reminiscent of one that Gould and Lewontin associated with the adaptationist program. Just as their stereotypical adaptationst became trapped in the myopic pursuit of one selectionist hypothesis after another, so can the investigation of CR functions in genomics lead to an unending series putative organism-level CR functions for junk DNA. This is an acute problem for genomics, because eukaryotic genomes are littered with transposable elements and their deactivated descendants which often masquerade as interesting CR-functional components and it is experimentally onerous to determine whether they lack such a function. I further argue that selectionist reasoning about TE-host coevolutionary dynamics can greatly streamline the investigative process. Importantly, selectionist hypotheses need not be well confirmed to be illuminating in this context. Informed selectionist reasoning about the strategic roles of TEs in the genome offers a corrective to the idea that most of our DNA is somehow CR functional for the organism. (shrink)

An analysis of the epistemological structure of democratic deliberation as a procedure in which legal norms are constructed reveals that deliberation combines procedural and substantive aspects in a unique and inextricable manner. The co-original recognition of the private and public autonomy of all citizens provides the substantive critical standard against which the justice of norms is measured. At the same time, such recognition requires that the particular needs and values of all people concerned be taken into account. Given the privileged (...) epistemic access people have to their own particular perspective, this requirement implies the ineliminability of actual deliberative procedures. The open-ended nature of these constructive procedures is partly due to the fact that the rules of the procedure are counterfactual and themselves subject to interpretation. More importantly, it also reflects the historical nature of our human world and the freedom of moral persons to shape and reshape their preferences. (shrink)

This paper critically compares a deliberative system based on parliamentary elections (an electoral system) and a deliberative system based on sortition (a lottocratic system). Both systems are analyzed in three dimensions. The epistemic dimension concerns the rational quality of the democratic process. The power dimension concerns the distribution of power and the extent to which citizens genuinely control all decisions. The motivational dimension, finally, concerns citizens’ identification with the decision-making process and their willingness to abide by its outcomes. We argue (...) that an electoral system is, in all three dimensions, normatively superior to a sortition-based system. Most prominently, we claim that electoral mechanisms provide visibility to the decision-making process. This enables a form of interactive representation in which citizens and their representatives engage in a joint process of opinion and will formation. Sortition, in contrast, is characterized by a democratically much poorer form of descriptive representation. The selected citizens are a representative sample of the wider citizenry, but they deliberate in a forum that remains mostly disconnected from that wider citizenry and therefore cannot shoulder the process of collective self-government. (shrink)

In this text I investigate the increasing usage of the Rights of Nature to approach the task of Stewardship for the Earth. The Ecuadorian constitution of 2008 introduces the indigenous concept of Pachamama and interpretes nature as a subject of rights. Reflecting the two 2017 cases of the Whanganui River and the Gangotri and Yamunotri Glaciers, my main argument is that, although the language of individual rights relies on modern subjectivity as well as the constitutionalism of the secular nation state, (...) it is obviously seen as a trans-cultural tool to justify Human Stewardship over the Earth in the Age of Anthropocene. I argue that the new Rights of Nature debate “provides” a straightforward justification of the Stewardship for the Earth and it includes two moments aimed to transcend European Modernity. The Rights Approach justifies obligations towards nature beyond human interests and it appeals to indigenous knowledge as an alternative sphere of argumentation. The relation of this endevor to the Anthropocene is twofold: The indigenous worldviews can now be translated into Rights of Nature because of the two core items of the Anthropocene that are gaining more and more acceptance: the idea of the Earth as a system and of history as a non-linear process. The scientific description of the Earth system offered by the Anthropocene supports holistic narratives of the Rights of Nature and facilitates the recognition of non-Western worldviews. At the same time the Rights of Nature help to clarify the normative claims implicit in the Anthropocene because the integrity of natural items and processes is presented as the explicit reason for a responsible human stewardship towards the Earth. (shrink)

An English double-embedded relative clause from which the middle verb is omitted can often be processed more easily than its grammatical counterpart, a phenomenon known as the grammaticality illusion. This effect has been found to be reversed in German, suggesting that the illusion is language specific rather than a consequence of universal working memory constraints. We present results from three self-paced reading experiments which show that Dutch native speakers also do not show the grammaticality illusion in Dutch, whereas both German (...) and Dutch native speakers do show the illusion when reading English sentences. These findings provide evidence against working memory constraints as an explanation for the observed effect in English. We propose an alternative account based on the statistical patterns of the languages involved. In support of this alternative, a single recurrent neural network model that is trained on both Dutch and English sentences is shown to predict the cross-linguistic difference in the grammaticality effect. (shrink)

I propose to show that any direct moral bioenhancement procedures that could be realized within a relatively short period of time are not realistic options. This does not have to worry us; however; because alternative options for promoting morality are available. Consequently; moral bioenhancement is not an option for dealing successfully with the increased potential destructiveness of contemporary technologies within a short-term framework; i.e. within this century. In what follows; I will explain why this is the case; and why; contrary (...) to Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu; I think this need not worry us too much. In section 1.; I will critically analyze moral bioenhancement by means of citalopram; aimed at reducing the tendency to harm others directly. I give this prominence because it could be a practical option for altering human emotions and dispositions – to my mind; it seems the most promising practical option in this field. In later sections; I will consider other means of realizing moral bioenhancement; since the first option does not do the job it is supposed to; and because Persson and Savulescu are concerned with alternative approaches. (shrink)

In my paper, I analyse the aspects of nostalgia as a form of lived bodily memory and show how the spatiotemporality of the present is ‘haunted’ by the superimposed appearance of the past. Nostalgia is a movement of seeping returns. We find ourselves overwhelmed by the desire of a place that is imprinted in our bodies. To become acquainted with a place takes time. And later on, it is this time that comes back to us when we desire this particular (...) place. In our desire for a place, we also desire a certain time, and we become familiar with both, time and place. An essential part of the structure of nostalgia is the distinctive fixation, qualitatively positive or negative, of an image that binds the self to a place and time. The past transpires into the present, and nostalgia shows how we experience time through our lived bodies. (shrink)

Un phénomène intéressant apparaît dans de multiples cultures juridiques : afin de concilier la lettre de la loi et son esprit, certaines lois sont contournées – légalement. Ce contournement, qui consiste à vider la loi de son esprit tout en faisant mine de respecter sa formulation (un loophole en anglais), pose d’un point de vue éthique la question de savoir s’il n’y a pas là hypocrisie. La loi juive est ici étudiée car les contournements qu’elle autorise sont critiqués par ses (...) détracteurs, mais également de l’intérieur : tous les contournements ne sont pas approuvés, loin s’en faut. Le présent texte, qui se veut seulement exploratoire, essaie de montrer quels contournements sont autorisés et pour quelles raisons. (shrink)

Streszczenie Salomon Igel (1889-1942) był jednym z kilku wypromowanych przez Kazimierza Twardowskiego doktorów psychologii, Zajmował się teoretycznymi podstawami psychologii wywodząc je wprost z filozofii. Stał na stanowisku psychologicznego funkcjonalizmu twierdząc, że zjawiska psychiczne są postrzegane zmysłowo. Za jedyny przedmiot psychologii uważał świadomość. Konsekwentne rozwijanie tego założenia doprowadziło go do próby sformułowania oryginalnej koncepcji filozofii elementów witalnych, która łączyła w sobie odkrycia epistemologii, psychologii oraz fizjologii. W jego dorobku znajdują się również prace z dydaktyki filozofii i psychologii. Zginął śmiercią samobójczą podczas (...) wojny na terenie lwowskiego getta a wraz z nim przepadł cały jego dorobek naukowy i przygotowywane do publikacji wyniki jego najnowszych badań. Słowa kluczowe: Salomon Igel, Kazimierz Twardowski, psychologia, filozofia, Uniwersytet Jana Kazimierza we Lwowie, Polskie Towarzystwo Filozoficzne. (shrink)

On the basis of an earlier contribution to the philosophy of computer science by Amnon Eden, this essay discusses to what extent Eden’s ‘paradigms’ of computer science can be transferred or applied to software engineering. This discussion implies an analysis of how software engineering and computer science are related to each other. The essay concludes that software engineering can neither be fully subsumed by computer science, nor vice versa. Consequently, also the philosophies of computer science and software engineering—though related to (...) each other—are not identical branches of a general philosophy of science. This also implies that not all of Eden’s earlier arguments can be directly mapped from the domain of computer science into the domain of software science. After the discussion of this main topic, the essay also points to some further problems and open issues for future studies in the philosophy of software science and engineering. (shrink)

This article uses the idea of resilience as a point of departure for analysing some contemporary challenges to the climate justice movement posed by social-ecological sciences. Climate justice activists are increasingly rallying for a system-change, demanding fundamental changes to political bureaucracy and the economy, which would put ecology, biodiversity and climate change first for all future political decisions. Since the concept of resilience has taken up a central role in recent developments in ecological sciences, it has also become part of (...) the activist debate. The article’s main argument is that the scientific framework behind resilience is not politically neutral and that this framework tends to weaken the activist’s demands for a just transition and place more emphasis on technical and bureaucratic processes. (shrink)

The ways in which the sciences have been delineated and categorized throughout history provide insights into the formation, stabilization, and establishment of scientific systems of knowledge. The Dresdener school’s approach for explaining and categorizing the genesis of the engineering disciplines is still valid, but needs to be complemented by further-reaching methodological and theoretical reflections. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social practice is applied to the question of how individual agents succeed in influencing decisively a discipline’s changing object orientation, institutionalisation and self-reproduction. (...) Through the accumulation of social, cultural and economic capital, they succeed in realising their own organisational ideas and scientific programs. Key concepts for the analysis include the struggle for power and resources, monopolies of interpretation, and the degree of autonomy. A case study from the Aachener Technische Hochschule shows that the consolidation of ferrous metallurgy can be conceived as a symbolical struggle between Fritz Wüst, professor for ferrous metallurgy, and the German Iron and Steel Institute, leading to a construction of a system of differences in which scientists accepted being scientists rather than entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs accepted becoming entrepreneurs and renounced science. (shrink)

Let us by ‘first-order beliefs’ mean beliefs about the world, such as the belief that it will rain tomorrow, and by ‘second-order beliefs’ let us mean beliefs about the reliability of first-order, belief-forming processes. In formal epistemology, coherence has been studied, with much ingenuity and precision, for sets of first-order beliefs. However, to the best of our knowledge, sets including second-order beliefs have not yet received serious attention in that literature. In informal epistemology, by contrast, sets of the latter kind (...) play an important role in some respectable coherence theories of knowledge and justification. In this paper, we extend the formal treatment of coherence to second-order beliefs. Our main conclusion is that while extending the framework to second-order beliefs sheds doubt on the generality of the notorious impossibility results for coherentism, another problem crops up that might be no less damaging to the coherentist project: facts of coherence turn out to be epistemically accessible only to agents who have a good deal of insight into matters external to their own belief states. (shrink)

The thesis that the probability of a conditional`if A, C' is the corresponding conditional probability of C, given A, enjoys wide currency among philosophers and growing empirical support in psychology. In this paper I ask how a probabilisitic account of conditionals along these lines could be extended to unconditional sentences, i.e., conditionals with interrogative antecedents. Such sentences are typically interpreted as equivalent to conjunctions of conditionals. This raises a number of challenges for a probabilistic account, chief among them the question (...) of what the probability of a conjunction of conditionals should be. I offer an analysis which addresses these issues by extending the interpretation of conditionals in Bernoulli models to the case of unconditionals. (shrink)

We investigate the Ramsey theory of continuous graph-structures on complete, separable metric spaces and apply the results to the problem of covering a plane by functions. Let the homogeneity number[Formula: see text] of a pair-coloring c:[X]2→2 be the number of c-homogeneous subsets of X needed to cover X. We isolate two continuous pair-colorings on the Cantor space 2ω, c min and c max, which satisfy [Formula: see text] and prove: Theorem. For every Polish space X and every continuous pair-coloringc:[X]2→2with[Formula: see (...) text], [Formula: see text] There is a model of set theory in which[Formula: see text]and[Formula: see text]. The consistency of [Formula: see text] and of [Formula: see text] follows from [20]. We prove that [Formula: see text] is equal to the covering number of 2 by graphs of Lipschitz functions and their reflections on the diagonal. An iteration of an optimal forcing notion associated to c min gives: Theorem. There is a model of set theory in which ℝ2 is coverable byℵ1graphs and reflections of graphs of continuous real functions; ℝ2 is not coverable byℵ1graphs and reflections of graphs of Lipschitz real functions. Figure 1.1 in the introduction summarizes the ZFC results in Part I of the paper. The independence results in Part II show that any two rows in Fig. 1.1 can be separated if one excludes [Formula: see text] from row. (shrink)

The remarks which follow deal with the ideas which I developed in more detail in my book: between Experience and Metaphysics. They are inspired principally by the vigorous polemic aroused by the publication several years ago of a work which caused a great uproar in epistemological circles; I am speaking of The Structure of Scientific Revolution by T.S. Kuhn. One could thus consider this essay, as well as my book, as an element to be added to that polemic's dossier. It (...) goes without saying that I am indebted to a great number of those who before me have given their points of view on the question, whether I agree with their opinions or not. (shrink)

The main thesis of the paper is that change and time depend existentially on a specific property of being, described by the author as the Heraclitean unstability (i.e. a kind ofsusceptibility to non-existence). Change and time are, in substance, quite different aspects of being; but they are mutually connected: time cannot exist without occurence of changes; and vice versa. All these intuitions are logically reconstructed by the author.