The article discusses some of the fundamental conceptual and theoretical aspects of rational choice and moral order. A distinction is drawn between constitutional interests and compliance interests, and it is argued that a viable moral order requires that the two interests somehow be brought into congruence. It is shown that with regard to the prospects for a spontaneous emergence of such congruence, a distinction between two kinds of moral rules which we call trust-rules and solidarity-rules is of crucial importance.

Discoverers of “market failures” as well as advocates of the general efficiency of a “true, unhampered market” sometimes seem to disregard the fundamental fact that there is no such thing as a “market as such.” What we call a market is always a system of social interaction characterized by a specific institutional framework, that is, by a set of rules defining certain restrictions on the behavior of the market participants, whether these rules are informal, enforced by private sanctions, or formal, (...) enforced by a particular agency, the “protective state,” in J. M. Buchanan's terminology. (shrink)

Normative individualism appears to be an obvious normative premise underlying a liberal conception of the desirable social order. The shortcomings of some common Interpretations of this premise are discussed and a more consistent as well as a more workable standard for assessing the ‘goodness’ of alternative socio-institutional arrangements is specified. With such an Interpretation of normative individualism, a contractrarian conception as advocated by J.M. Buchanan can be viewed as a systematic extension of classical liberalism.

What is the nature and role of competition in markets and politics? This book examines the institutional dimension of markets and the rules and institutions that condition the operation of market economies. Particular attention is paid to the the role of the state, specifically the role of governments in shaping and maintaining the economic constitution of their societies.

What is the nature and role of competition in markets and politics? This book examines the institutional dimension of markets and the rules and institutions that condition the operation of market economies. Particular attention is paid to the the role of the state, specifically the role of governments in shaping and maintaining the economic constitution of their societies.

Darwin himself suggested the idea of generalizing the core Darwinian principles to cover the evolution of social entities. Also in the nineteenth century, influential social scientists proposed their extension to political society and economic institutions. Nevertheless, misunderstanding and misrepresentation have hindered the realization of the powerful potential in this longstanding idea. Some critics confuse generalization with analogy. Others mistakenly presume that generalizing Darwinism necessarily involves biological reductionism. This essay outlines the types of phenomena to which a generalized Darwinism applies, and (...) upholds that there is no reason to exclude social or economic entities. (shrink)

The application of evolutionary ideas to socioeconomic systems has been an increasingly prominent theme in the work of Friedrich Hayek, and the motif has become dominant in his recent book. In an earlier issue of this journal, Viktor Vanberg raises two substantive criticisms of Friedrich Hayek' theory of cultural evolution that invoke some important questions concerning use of the evolutionary analogy in social science.

We paraphrase Descartes’ famous dictum in the area of AI ethics where the “I doubt and therefore I am” is suggested as a necessary aspect of morality. Therefore AI, which cannot doubt itself, cannot possess moral agency. Of course, this is not the end of the story. We explore various aspects of the human mind that substantially differ from AI, which includes the sensory grounding of our knowing, the act of understanding, and the significance of being able to doubt ourselves. (...) The foundation of our argument is the discipline of ethics, one of the oldest and largest knowledge projects of human history, yet, we seem only to be beginning to get a grasp of it. After a couple of thousand years of studying the ethics of humans, we (humans) arrived at a point where moral psychology suggests that our moral decisions are intuitive, and all the models from ethics become relevant only when we explain ourselves. This recognition has a major impact on what and how we can do regarding AI ethics. We do not offer a solution, we explore some ideas and leave the problem open, but we hope somewhat better understood than before our study. (shrink)

Dr. Viktor Dörfler combines his background in developing and implementing AI with scholarly research on knowledge and cultivating talent to address misconceptions about AI. The Element explains what AI can and cannot do, carefully delineating facts from beliefs or wishful thinking. Filled with examples, this practical Element is thought-provoking. The purpose is to help CEOs figure out how to make the best use of AI, suggesting how to extract AI’s greatest value through appropriate task allocation between human experts and (...) AI. The author challenges the attribution of characteristics like understanding, thinking, and creativity to AI, supporting his argument with the ideas of the finest AI philosophers. He also discusses in depth one of the most sensitive AI-related topics: ethics. The readers are encouraged to make up their own minds about AI and draw their own conclusions rather than accepting opinions from people with vested interests or an agenda. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Sociological theories of space have so far not provided an in-depth analysis of online spaces. The paper addresses this issue by means of Löw’s relational theory of space. As this theory mainly focuses on material spaces, it is necessary to embrace the phenomenological perspective in order to apply it to the virtual realm. More recent phenomenological research has highlighted the ongoing mediatization or virtualization of the life-world. These theories, and presence research more generally, are useful for examining the layers of (...) virtual presence. This paper focuses on two emblematic types of spaces: multiplayer online role-playing games and Skype video chats. The first represents an online version of a Schutzian finite province of meaning, while Skyping is an example of how the paramount reality of everyday life expands into the virtual realm. Albeit differently, actors in both cases constitute hybrid, virtual-material spaces with various forms and degrees of virtual presence. User experiences in these spaces are in line with contemporary sociological diagnoses indicating the vanishing experience of living in space and the general tendency of late modernity to question previous social forms of modernity. (shrink)

The article highlights the conceptual issues related to Kant’s analysis of the soul, a concept of utmost importance for the metaphysics and psychology of German academic philosophy (Schulphilosophie) of the Enlightenment was significantly dependent on the developed and systematically presented philosophical and scientific ideas and concepts of Christian Wolff. Kantian philosophy, its themes, and conceptual language were formed in the crucible of Wolfean discourse, and from the early 1770s in the struggle against it, which led to the emergence of a (...) new, critical philosophy – transcendental idealism, in which the problem of the soul, consciousness, and self-awareness became fundamental. It is this issue that was thoroughly covered in the «Critique of Pure Reason» and other works that were published later, after the first Critique. The article draws attention to Kant’s Lectures, which, on the one hand, demonstrate his critical attitude towards the so-called Wolfians, their metaphysics, and psychology, and, on the other hand, the lecture materials illustrate Kant's new conceptual position, and, what is important, develop, supplement and clarify it. The sources of Kant’s lectures are highlighted, taking into account the fact that we have at our disposal lecture notes, the authors of which are either unknown or, if known, their authorship is still somewhat doubtful, since they are notes that different people have rewritten. The article analyses lecture notes on psychology, the authors of which are more or less well-known, and experts recognize these notes as quite valid. The conceptual content of these lectures allows us to look at Kant’s understanding of the problem of the soul in a somewhat broader context compared to the «Critique of Pure Reason», where this problem is analyzed in connection with the paralogisms of reason and the transcendental deduction of categories. In his lectures on psychology, Kant draws attention to the problem of the interaction of the soul with the human body, the «location of the soul», linking it not so much to the organs of the human body (for example, the head) as to the location of a person as a bodily being in the world makes all acts of consciousness, self-awareness, and sense perception possible. Kant emphasizes the basic importance of such a spatial location of a person for the soul, as something that belongs to a person with a certain integrity, and not a separate organ, to act properly, to perform its cognitive functions. The article analyses the problem of existence, which is important for critical philosophy, its various modalities, and predication, with a special emphasis on the problem of the existence of metaphysical objects - the soul, God, and the world as a whole. (shrink)

Forma i materʹi︠a︡l v iskusstve -- Muzyka -- Zhivopisʹ -- Literatura -- Obnovlenie formy -- Kinematograf -- Si︠u︡zhet v kinematografe -- Chaplin -- Budushchnostʹ kino -- Zakli︠u︡chenie.

Available for the first time in English, this work explores a range of mental disorders in the context of Frankl's theory of human motivation. Skillfully translated and featuring extensive annotation, this English language edition remains true to the original while updating assessment and treatment protocols to be compatible with 21st century medicine. As the title suggests, On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders applies a theoretical treatise to the practical treatment of variety of disorders. This long-awaited addition to the (...) body of English language literature introduces Viktor Frankl's clinical insights to a new generation of mental health professionals, and has much to offer to practitioners of all levels of experience. (shrink)

In past and modern psychophysics there are several unresolved methodological and philosophical problems of human and animal perception, including the outstanding question of the relational basis of whole psychophysics. Here the main issue is discussed: if, and to what extent, there are viable bridges between the traditional “gestalt” oriented approaches and the modern perceptual-cognitive perspectives in psychophysics. Thereby the key concept of psychological “frame of reference” is presented by pointing to Hermann Ebbinghaus' geometric-optical illusions, on the one hand, and Max (...) Wertheimer's treatment of the traditional transposition phenomenon, on the other hand. A much-needed theoretical reorientation of future research may help to overcome the philosophical narrowness of present-day human and comparative psychophysics. (shrink)

We present results from a single case study based on semi-structured interviews with a student (a boy in school year 3) diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and his school staff after participating in a short and small-scale intervention carried out in a socio-economically disadvantaged Swedish elementary school in 2019. The student participated in a seven week long intervention with a total of 12 philosophical dialogues (ranging from 45 to 60 minutes). Two facilitators, both with years of facilitation experience and teacher (...) degree and at least BA in philosophy, facilitated the majority of the dialogues and mainly followed a ”routine” procedure. The student was interviewed in direct connection to the end of the intervention about his experiences from the dialogues and his perceptions about whether and how the dialogues had influenced him. The student’s two teachers, who had participated in the dialogues as participants, were interviewed as a pair, also in direct connection to the end of the intervention, while the school principal was interviewed two years after the study. These staff interviews concerned the staff’s experiences of the influence of the dialogues on the students within the intervention as well as transfer effects to other contexts in school. The data from the study include detailed elaborations from a student perspective of different effects on the student’s communicative and cognitive development, which are in several respects supported also by staff reports. The results show that the student was able, interested, and willing to participate in philosophical dialogues, and our data point to several positive outcomes for the student in the communicative and cognitive domains. (shrink)

In this article, we distinguish between three approaches to ethics in school, each giving an interpretation of the expression ‘ethics in school’: the descriptive facts about ethics approach, roughly consisting of teaching empirical facts about moral matters to students; the moral fostering approach, consisting of mediating a set of given values to students; and the philosophical ethics (PE) approach, consisting of critically discussing and evaluating moral issues with students. Thereafter, three influential arguments for why there ought to be ethics in (...) school are discussed, and each argument is interpreted given each approach to ethics in school, respectively. Thereby, we evaluate which interpretation of ‘ethics in school’ produces the strongest arguments, and thus, which approach is best supported by these arguments. The conclusion is that there ought to be PE in school. (shrink)

Nudges have been criticized for working ‘in the dark’, influencing people without their full awareness. To assess whether this property renders nudging an illegitimate policy tool in liberal democracies, we argue that in scrutinizing nudge transparency, we should adequately divide our focus between nudging techniques, the nudgers employing them, and the nudgees subjected to them. We develop an account of what it means for nudgees to be ‘watchful’, a disposition that enables them to resist and circumvent nudges. We argue that (...) such ‘watchfulness’ should be cultivated if we want to implement nudges in legitimate, accountable, and democratic ways. (shrink)