Debates surrounding the high-level contents of perceptual experience focus on whether weperceive the high-level properties of visual objects, such as the property of being a pine tree. Thispaper considers instead whether we perceive the high-level properties of visual scenes, such asthe property of being a forest. Liberals about the contents of perceptual experience have offered avariety of phenomenal contrast cases designed to reveal how the high-level properties of objectsfigure in our visual experience. I offer a series of equivalent phenomenal contrast (...) cases intendedto show how the high-level properties of visual scenes also figure in visual experience. Thisfirst-person evidence of high-level scene perception is combined with third-person evidence fromthe extensive empirical literature on scene categorisation. Critics of liberalism have attempted todeflate existing phenomenal contrast cases by explaining the contrasts in terms of non-perceptualcontents or in terms of attentional changes. I show that neither response is applicable to mycontrast cases and conclude that we do indeed perceptually experience the high-level propertiesof visual scenes. (shrink)

This chapter examines the role of social learning in the governance of the forest ecosystem service through a case study that involves forest groups in Flanders, Belgium, where social learning has generated significant results within a short period. The case study specifically focuses on three social learning mechanisms extensively used in managing social-ecological systems. These mechanisms include a monitoring strategy based on sustainability criteria and indicators as a liberal learning device, experimenting with disruptive action strategies, and involving new stakeholders in (...) the learning process. The forest groups focus on instrumental and social trust to create trust between the government and the forest owners. Multifunctional forest management is the most effective strategy of extending forest-based services in Flanders. These strategies have produced significant results in Flanders in a short period. (shrink)

There can be no doubt that discrimination based on sex, race, ethnicity, religion or beliefs should not be tolerated in academia. Surprisingly, however, in recent years, policies of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity(DIE), officially introduced to counteract discrimination, have increasingly led to quite the opposite result: the exclusion of individuals who do not share a radical 'woke' ideology on identity politics (feminism, other gender activisms, critical race theory, etc.), and to the suppression of the academic freedom to discuss such dogmas. This (...) subversion of academia ― disguised Trojan-horse style as universal human rights advocacy ― is unacceptable because academia must be politically neutral and protect freedom of speech, a cornerstone of professional scholarly activity without which universities as we know them will slowly but surely suffocate. -/- Our purpose here is to put together some particularly illustrative cases of such repression in a single book, testifying to a ubiquitous trend within western culture, irreducible to a few isolated complaints. The essays contained here illustrate the abuse of power, censorship and witch-hunts at many universities and research centres in the name of DIE. -/- List of coauthors in alphabetical order: Dorian Abbot, Tomonori Agoh, Gerhard Amendt, Ivar Arpi, David Benatar, Peter Boghossian, Civitas Research Team, David Díaz Pardo de Vera, Pedro Domingos, Janice Fiamengo, Étienne Forest, Jorge Gibert Galassi, Norman Goldstuck, José L. González Quirós, Lawrence M. Krauss, Patrick LaBelle, Martín López Corredoira, Heather Mac Donald, Martin Malmgren, Erik. J. Olsson, Jordan Peterson, Constantin Polychronakos, Philip C. Salzman, Alessandro Strumia, Tom Todd, Andrei Yafaev. (shrink)

This report aims to offer insights into cutting-edge research on digital well-being. Many of these insights come from a 2-day academic-impact event, The Future of Digital Well-Being, hosted by a team of researchers working with the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in February 2024. Today, achieving and maintaining well-being in the face of online technologies is a multifaceted challenge that we believe requires using theoretical resources of different research disciplines. This report explores diverse perspectives on how digital (...) well-being can be actively cultivated, while also emphasising the importance of considering individual differences, societal contexts, and nuanced cultural factors. We aim to offer a holistic view of the future of digital well-being, one that will inspire the next generation of designers of online tools, as well as policymakers who will regulate these tools. We start by asking what digital well-being is – how we can best define a concept that is used by diverse stakeholders and researchers from many disciplines in various ways. To do this, we explore the classic ethical theories of well-being, showing how they can give us insights into how the term digital well-being is currently deployed. We then move to look at the existing strategies that have been proposed to actively cultivate digital well-being, exploring the business models that threaten digital well-being and the relative advantages of the digital and non-digital solutions that are currently proposed. On the one hand, digital tools – such as Apple’s Screen Time and app blockers such as Opal and Forest – integrate seamlessly with the digital lifestyles of users. They also create precise metrics for digital well-being, which facilitates their solutions to reduce screen time. On the other hand, non-digital solutions, including mindfulness practices, digital detoxes, and digital well-being coaching, offer a new set of tools to reconnect individuals to their natural rhythms and help to actively promote offline activities. We then move to discuss diversity and how various groups of users have strikingly different digital well-being needs. Embracing neurodiversity in digital well-being is crucial as it strongly impacts the users’ experience of online technologies. When designing for diversity, organisations and designers alike need to prioritise customization for people with physical disabilities, mitigate harmful content for users with mental well-being conditions, address gender stereotypes and online harassment, and be designed in ways that recognize the very real risks of online technologies. This report closes by examining cultural differences. We believe that non-Western conceptions of well-being offer rich sources for enhancing digital well-being insofar as these traditions can inform and inspire the designers of future online technologies. We focus on East-Asian and South-Asian traditions, although in further work we recognise it would be useful to investigate conceptions of well-being that are influential in the Gulf region, Africa, and South America. Each of these areas have ethical frameworks that discuss well-being in depth as well as a rich cultural heritage. In conclusion, this report’s insights underscore the imperative of recognizing diversity in digital well-being, both in terms of cultural contexts and disciplinary perspectives. It emphasises the need for culturally responsive design methodologies and the integration of non-Western philosophical perspectives into current digital well-being research. Embracing this diversity, we believe, offers the best chance to create digital environments that prioritise well-being for users and the societies they live in across the world. Ultimately, we believe that it is not only about designing better online products; it’s about shaping a digital landscape that promotes well-being and flourishing for everyone. (shrink)

Jurgen Habermas's critical communications theory of society has excited widespread interest in recent years. The essays in this book explore the research implications of Habermas's theory for the analysis of modern problems of public life.

Humans preferentially remember information processed for their survival relevance, a memorial benefit known as the survival processing effect. Memory is also biased towards information associated with the prospect of reward. Given the adaptiveness of these effects, they may depend on similar mechanisms. We tested whether motivation drives both effects, with reward incentives that are known to boost extrinsic motivation and survival processing perhaps stimulating intrinsic motivation. Accordingly, we manipulated survival processing and reward incentive independently during an incidental-encoding task in which (...) participants chose between pairs of words concerning their relevance for a scenario, and examined the effects on encoding event-related potentials activity and later performance on a surprise recall test. We hypothesized that if survival processing fosters intrinsic motivation, it should reduce the beneficial effects of extrinsic motivation. In contrast to this prediction, we found that reward incentive and survival processing independently improved memory and that the P300, a measure of lower-level cognitive resource allocation, was increased by reward incentive independent of survival processing. Further, survival processing and reward incentive independently increased the frontal slow wave, a measure of higher-level elaboration. These findings suggest that while survival processing and reward incentive may both increase encoding elaboration, the memory-enhancing effect of survival processing does not depend on increased intrinsic motivation. Additionally, we replicated a recent finding whereby the survival processing effect generalizes to a choice-based encoding task and further showed that the beneficial effect of choice on memory likely does not interact with either survival processing or reward. (shrink)

Cet essai a été présenté à l’atelier sur La démocratie de l’espace et l’espace de la démocratie, qui a eu lieu à Newcastle, en Angleterre, le 11 janvier 2008. Une version antérieure a été présentée à l’Université de Tokyo le 13 novembre 2007. Il sera publié en néerlandais, traduit par Freek Jansens, sous le titre “het plannen van ruimtes van (on)mogelijkheid” dans une collection éditée par Maarten Hajer et Jantine Grijzen sur les questions de politique contemporaine. Il a été traduit (...) de l’anglais par Martin Blanchard et révisé par Daniel Weinstock. (shrink)

'By identifying the extent to which Aristotle's thinking about ethics was shaped by notions drawn from the crafts Angier has thrown new light on a surprising number of topics and has deepened our understanding of tensions within Aristotle's thought. It is by now a rare achievement to have said something new, true and important about Aristotle.' -- Alasdair MacIntyre, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, USA.

Tom Sparrow shows how, in the 21st century, speculative realism aims to do what phenomenology could not: provide a philosophical method that disengages the human-centred approach to metaphysics in order to chronicle the complex realm of nonhuman reality. -/- Through a focused reading of the methodological statements and metaphysical commitments of key phenomenologists and speculative realists, Sparrow shows how speculative realism is replacing phenomenology as the beacon of realism in contemporary Continental philosophy.

Induction of c‐fos expression occurs following treatment of diverse cell types with agents that trigger mitogenesis, differentiation or membrane depolarization. We suggest that c‐fos may be regarded as a marker for a set of rapidly induced genes (termed cellular immediate‐early genes) whose function is to couple extracellular stimulation to long‐term responses. In the brain, these genes may contribute to the adaptive alterations involved in neuronal plasticity.

Traditionally, the sense of touch—alongside the senses of taste and smell—has been excluded from the aesthetic domain. These proximal modalities are thought to deliver only sensory pleasures, not the complex, world-directed perceptual states that characterize aesthetic experience. In this paper, I argue that this tradition fails to recognize the perceptual possibilities of haptic touch, which allows us to experience properties of the objects with which we make bodily contact, including their weight, shape, solidity, elasticity, and smoothness. These features, moreover, may (...) be indicative of how well-suited an object is for its function, and in feeling them we can thus feel the positive aesthetic quality of functional beauty. (shrink)

John Rawls's influential theory of justice and public reason has often been thought to exclude religion from politics, out of fear of its illiberal and destabilizing potentials. It has therefore been criticized by defenders of religion for marginalizing and alienating the wealth of religious sensibilities, voices, and demands now present in contemporary liberal societies. In this anthology, established scholars of Rawls and the philosophy of religion reexamine and rearticulate the central tenets of Rawls's theory to show they in fact offer (...) sophisticated resources for accommodating and responding to religions in liberal political life. The chapters reassert the subtlety, openness, and flexibility of his sense of liberal "respect" and "consensus," revealing their inclusive implications for religious citizens. They also explore the means he proposes for accommodating nonliberal religions in liberal politics, developing his conception of "public reason" into a novel account of the possibilities for rational engagement between liberal and religious ideas. And they reevaluate Rawls's liberalism from the "transcendent" perspectives of religions themselves, critically considering its normative and political value, as well as its own "religious" character. _Rawls and Religion_ makes a unique and important contribution to contemporary debates over liberalism and its response to the proliferation of religions in contemporary political life. (shrink)

In the debate on the basis of moral equality, one conclusion achieves near consensus: that we must reject all accounts that ground equality in the possession of some psychological capacity (Psychological Capacity Accounts). This widely held view crystallises around three objections. The first is the Arbitrariness Objection, which holds that the threshold at which the possession of the relevant capacities places an individual within the required range is arbitrary. The second is the Variations Objection, which holds that there is rational (...) pressure to acknowledge that variations in psychological capacities between individuals are morally relevant. The third is the No Rational Agency Objection, according to which Psychological Capacity Accounts have unpalatable implications for our treatment of humans who do not possess the relevant capacities. We develop a Psychological Capacity Account based on the capacity for a conception of the good and offer a novel defence of the account against these objections. (shrink)

Contemporary global politics poses urgent challenges – from humanitarian, migratory and environmental problems to economic, religious and military conflicts – that strain not only existing political systems and resources, but also the frameworks and concepts of political thinking. The standard cosmopolitan response is to invoke a sense of global community, governed by such principles as human rights or humanitarianism, free or fair trade, global equality, multiculturalism, or extra-national democracy. Yet, the contours, grounds and implications of such a global community remain (...) notoriously controversial, and it risks abstracting precisely from the particular and conflictual character of the challenges which global politics poses. The contributions to this collection undertake to develop a more fruitful cosmopolitan response to global political challenges, one that roots cosmopolitanism in the particularity and conflict of global politics itself. They argue that this ‘contestatory’ cosmopolitanism must be dialectical, agonistic and democratic: that is, its concepts and principles must be developed immanently and critically out of prevailing normative resources; they must reflect and acknowledge their antagonistic roots; and they must be the result of participatory and self-determining publics. In elaborating this alternative, the contributions also return to neglected cosmopolitan theorists like Hegel, Adorno, Arendt, Camus, Derrida, and Mouffe, and reconsider mainstream figures such as Kant and Habermas. This book was originally published as a special edition of _Critical Horizons. _. (shrink)

In India, domestic workers' movements advocated for their own and other workers’ rights both before and during the pandemic. Over the course of the pandemic, however, the political landscape and de...

In order to know what a belief is, we need to know when it is appropriate to say that two subjects (or the same subject at two different times) believe(s) the same or entertain the same thought. This is not entirely straightforward. Consider for instance1. Tom thinks that he himself is the smartest and Tim believes the same2. In 2001, Bill believed that some action had to be taken to save the rain forest and today he believes the same.What does (...) Tim think? That he, Tim, is the smartest, or that Tom is? And what does Bill believe today? That action had to be taken in 2001 or that it has to be taken now? Both answers are intuitively acceptable. This has to be accounted for somehow.Building on Mark Richard's work on tense, Scott Soames 1 claims that the substitutional interpretation of the quantifiers is unable to account for the intended meaning of such statements as (2) and the validity of some inferences involving them. I will show that his argument is not convincing. Not only does the substitutional interpretation fare no worse than the objectual one, but it seems to be able to avoid a problem which could be seriously damaging for any account of the sameness of thoughts based on the notion of structured proposition. In the first section, I state the problem allegedly raised by tensed belief ascriptions to the substitutional interpretation of the quantifiers. In the second, Soames's argument is shown to be flawed. I also show that the content of the that-clause in (2) is not faithfully represented by any kind of structured proposition. Finally, I show how the substitutional interpretation can handle all such statements as (1) and (2) and the inferences involving them. (shrink)

In ancient times, the main approaches to metaphysical realism were intuitive. In modern times, foundationalism has replaced intuition as the main strategy to make out metaphysical realist claims to know. In On Foundationalism, Rockmore argues that foundationalism fails in all its known variants.

An introduction to functionalism in the philosophy of psychology/mind, and review of the current state of debate pro and con. Forthcoming in the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology (John Symons and Paco Calvo, eds.).

In the course of developing a semantics with epistemological intent, Brandom claims that his inferentialism is Hegelian. This paper argues that, even on a charitable reading, Brandom is an anti-Hegelian.

If all the participants in the color ontology debate are naturalists with good sciences on their side, how could color subjectivism win? The apparent reason is that subjectivism is supported by the opponent process theory that is a successful neurophysiological reduction of colors. We will argue that the real reason is the unique reductive methodology of the opponent paradigm. We will undermine subjectivism by arguing against the methodology.

This editor's preface introduces a special issue of Critical Horizons on the theme of “contestatory cosmopolitanism.” After identifying the broad failings of the standard cosmopolitan appeal to global community, it presents the defining features of the “contestatory” alternative and introduces the papers in light of them.

Dystopias matter because they make us think. They help us to imagine and envisage how the present can change into something very nasty. … Dystopias thus interrogate the now and offer warnings and sometimes prophecies about the future; they are often the jeremiads of utopianism. But sometimes they offer glimmers of hope.One way of being anti-anti-utopian is to be utopian. It's crucial to keep imagining that things could get better, and furthermore to imagine how they might get better. … So (...) by force of will or the sheer default of emergency we make ourselves have utopian thoughts and ideas. This is the necessary next step following the dystopian moment, without which dystopia is stuck at a level of political quietism... (shrink)

In this paper I systematically criticise Feldman’s and Haybron’s theories of happiness as subjective well-being [SWB]. Having elaborated their trichotomy between SWB, welfare and virtue, I then outline Aristotle’s rival ethical schema, which construes these as aspects within an inextricable, organic whole, viz. eudaimonia. In order to vindicate this rival schema, I begin with four thought-experiments: Feldman’s Bertha, the indoctrinated housewife, Haybron’s ‘happy slave’, and two of my own. I argue that these demonstrate – contra Feldman and Haybron, but in (...) line with Aristotle – that happiness is essentially conditioned by objective welfare-goods. I then move on to how such goods are essentially conditioned, in turn, by the virtues. It follows that happiness itself is both logically and ontologically conditioned by the practice of the virtues. Although this Aristotelian conclusion faces charges of being moralistic and counter-evidential, it can overcome these, thereby securing – pace Feldman and Haybron – an authentic, sustainable conception of happiness. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDifficulties with inhibiting fear have been associated with the emergence of anxiety problems and poor response to cognitive–behavioural treatment. Fear inhibition problems measured using experimental paradigms involving aversive stimuli may be inappropriate for vulnerable samples and may not capture fear inhibition problems evident in everyday life. We present the Fear Inhibition Questionnaire, a self-report measure of fear inhibition abilities. We assess the FIQ’s factor structure across two cultures and how well it correlates with fear inhibition indices derived experimentally. Adolescent participants (...) from Hong Kong and England completed the FIQ, with the English participants also completing a conditioning and extinction task to assess fear inhibition problems. Across both cultures, the FIQ showed a single factor structure and low FIQ scores, or worse fear inhibition problems, were associated with self-reports of heightened anxiety. Correlation of FIQ scores with experimental indices, whi... (shrink)

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW CENTURY provides a good time to reflect on the most influential philosophers of this period, or those most likely to survive, or again whom we should be reading in a hundred years. The answer one gives to this type of question obviously depends on what one thinks philosophy is about. I would like to suggest that at the beginning of the new century, at the start of the new millennium, the philosopher we will and should (...) still be reading at the end of the new century is not one of the obvious candidates, like Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Heidegger, Peirce, or Dewey, Rorty’s favorite, but the nineteenth century German thinker, G. W. F. Hegel. (shrink)

From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in Aristotle. By Leunissen Mariska.