The purpose of this article is to consider the question of whether democratic legitimacy requires viewpoint neutrality with regard to political speech – including extremist political speech, such as hate speech. The starting point of my discussion is Jeremy Waldron’s negative answer to this question. He argues that it is permissible for liberal democracies to ban certain extremist viewpoints – such as vituperative hate speech – because such viewpoint-based restrictions protect the dignity of persons and a social and moral environment (...) of mutual respect. According to Waldron, well-drafted narrow hate speech bans are not democratically illegitimate, and they do not undermine systemic democratic legitimacy – that is, the legitimacy of a democratic political system. In contrast to Waldron, I will argue that democratic legitimacy requires viewpoint neutrality to respect persons as thinking agents. I will defend a civil libertarian doctrine of viewpoint neutrality, and this doctrine requires that citizens in liberal democracies ought to have a legal free speech right to do moral wrong – that is, a legal right to express and defend any political viewpoint or idea, even if it is morally wrong to express, or expose others to, such views. It will be argued that any viewpoint-based restriction on public discourse is democratically illegitimate, and that such restrictions undermine systemic democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to consider the question of whether respect for persons requires toleration of the expression of any extremist political or religious viewpoint within public discourse. The starting point of my discussion is Steven Heyman and Jonathan Quong’s interesting defences of a negative answer to this question. They argue that respect for persons requires that liberal democracies should not tolerate the public expression of extremist speech that can be regarded as recognition-denying or respect-denying speech – that (...) is, speech or other expressive conduct that expresses viewpoints that explicitly reject that all persons should be regarded and treated as free and equal persons or citizens. According to Heyman and Quong, recognition-denying speech falls outside the scope of the right to participate in public discourse (i.e. what it is a right to). In contrast to Heyman and Quong, one can argue that a strong case can be made for viewpoint neutrality on the basis of what can be called a libertarian or Nozickean status-based theory of rights. According to this theory, toleration in a liberal democracy requires respect for the status of persons as thinking agents, and respect for thinking agents and their sovereignty over their own mind requires viewpoint neutrality – that is, a basic right to participate in public discourse as speakers and listeners free from state-imposed viewpoint-based restrictions. All persons should have a basic right to express, hear and consider any viewpoint within public discourse. This doctrine of viewpoint neutrality requires that citizens in liberal democracies ought to have a legal free speech right to do moral wrong – that is, a legal right to express and defend any viewpoint within public discourse, even if it is morally wrong to express, or expose others to, such views. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to consider whether some seats in a democratically elected legislative assembly ought to be reserved for representatives of future generations. In order to examine this question, I will propose a new democratic model for representing posterity. It is argued that this model has several advantages compared with a model for the democratic representation of future people previously suggested by Andrew Dobson. Nevertheless, the democratic model that I propose confronts at least two difficult problems. First, (...) it faces insoluble problems of representative legitimacy. Second, one might question whether this model provides a reasonably effective way to represent future interests compared with existing representative democratic institutions. Despite such problems, it is argued that political representation of posterity can be defended on the basis of fundamental ideas and ideals in recent theory of deliberative democracy. The first reason for this is that in a number of cases democratic decisions cannot be regarded as normatively legitimate from the point of view of deliberative democracy, unless posterity is given a voice. The second reason is that representation of posterity can contribute to more rational and impartial deliberations and decisions in legislative assemblies. (shrink)

The way our decisions and actions can affect future generations is surrounded by uncertainty. This is evident in current discussions of environmental risks related to global climate change, biotechnology and the use and storage of nuclear energy. The aim of this paper is to consider more closely how uncertainty affects our moral responsibility to future generations, and to what extent moral agents can be held responsible for activities that inflict risks on future people. It is argued that our moral responsibility (...) to posterity is limited because our ability to foresee how present decisions and activities will affect future people is limited. The reason for this is primarily that we are in a situation of ignorance regarding the pace and direction of future scientific and technological development. This ignorance reduces our responsibility in a temporal dimension because in most areas it is impossible to predict the interests and resource needs of future generations. In one area, however, we have fairly reliable knowledge about future people. It is reasonable to assume that future human beings will have the same basic physiological (physical and biological) needs as we have. On this basis, it is argued that we can be held responsible for activities causing avoidable damage to critical resources that are necessary to provide for future physiological needs. Furthermore, it is suggested that it is prima facie immoral to impose risks upon future generations in cases where the following conditions are fulfilled: (1) the risk poses a threat to the ability of future generations to meet their physiological needs, and (2) the risk assessment is supported by scientifically based harm scenarios. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to consider whether it is permissible for a liberal democratic state to deny anti-liberal-democratic citizens and groups the right to run for parliament. My answer to this question is twofold. On the one hand, I will argue that it is, in principle, permissible for liberal democratic states to deny anti-liberal-democratic citizens and groups the right to run for parliament. On the other hand, I will argue that it is rarely wise (or prudent) for ripe (...) democracies to exclude anti-liberal-democrats from parliamentary elections. There are at least two reasons for this. The first is related to the inherent stability of just institutions. The second is that exclusion can lead to group polarization and enclave deliberation that can engender political extremism and impair processes of interpersonal and intrapersonal deliberation in liberal democracies. (shrink)

This paper considers a guardianship model for the legal representation of future generations. According to this model, national and international courts should be given the competence to appoint guardians for future generations, if agents who care about the welfare of posterity apply for the creation of a guardianship in relation to a dispute that can be resolved by the application of law. This reform would grant guardians of future people legal standing or locus standi before courts, that is, the right (...) to bring an action before a court of law for adjudication. Although the guardianship model faces several difficult theoretical and practical problems pertaining to the representation of different near and distant future generations, it is argued that this model – and certain other legal norms intended to protect future basic needs – can be justified on the basis of the principle of liberty. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to propose and consider a new constitutional provision that can contribute to the protection of the vital needs of future generations. The proposal I wish to elaborate can be termed the posterity provision, and it has both substantive and procedural elements. The aim of this constitutional provision is twofold. The first is to encourage state authorities to make more future‐oriented deliberations and decisions. The second is to create more public awareness and improve the process (...) of public deliberation about issues affecting near and remote future generations. It is argued that a good case can be made for the proposed reforms compared with alternative substantive constitutional environmental provisions found in existing constitutions and in the literature on legal and political theory. The main reason for this is that the proposed law constitutes a better and more adequate basis for judicial enforcement than the alternatives, which tend to be very vague or unclear. In this connection, I contend that there are both epistemological and moral reasons for introducing constitutional provisions that focus on the protection of critical natural resources essential for meeting the basic physiological needs of future people. It is also argued that the posterity provision can be defended on the basis of central ideas and ideals in recent theory of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to consider some aspects of the question of how difficult it should be to amend or change constitutional laws through formal amendment procedures. The point of departure of my discussion is an amendment procedure that has recently been suggested by the prominent legal and political philosopher Bruce Ackerman. He defends a three-step amendment procedure – where a re-elected president is authorised to propose amendments that must thereafter be approved first by a two-thirds majority of (...) the legislature, and then by a simple majority of the citizens at the next two presidential elections. I propose and defend an alternative amendment procedure that can be termed the four-step procedure. According to this procedure, the right to propose amendments is granted both to legislators and voters via citizen initiatives. Thereafter, the proposed amendments should be placed before the legislature, where they must be approved by a simple majority in two successive parliaments, and there must be an interval of no less than one year between the two votes. If passed by the legislative assembly, the amendment(s) should be approved by a simple majority of the electorate in a referendum. However, a submajority of the legislators (i.e. a one-third minority) should be empowered to require an additional referendum on the proposed amendment(s), and this final referendum should be held two years after the first popular vote. In order to assess the outlined amendment procedures, I primarily focus on the following factors or criteria of evaluation, which I group under three headings: (1) Central ideas and ideals in deliberative democratic theory and the fact of persistent disagreement in modern pluralist societies (this includes considerations of how well alternative amendment procedures deal with disagreement among citizens); (2) rule of law values, stability and flexibility; and (3) the value of checks and balances that can guard against the abuse of power (or more precisely, whether the amendment procedures under consideration provide adequate checks and balances between courts, political actors and citizens). (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to consider the following question: To what extent is it permissible for a liberal democratic state to suppress the spread of illiberal ideas (including anti-democratic ideas)? I will discuss two approaches to this question. The first can be termed the clear and imminent danger approach, and the second the preventive approach. The clear and imminent danger approach implies that it is permissible for liberal states to suppress the spread of illiberal doctrines and ideas only (...) if they pose a clear and imminent danger to security and/or the stability of liberal democratic institutions. The preventive approach, which is the one that I will propose and defend, goes further than this: it implies that it can also be permissible for a liberal state to restrict the spread of illiberal doctrines and ideas in order to prevent certain extremist illiberal groups (which I will term offensive illiberal groups) from gaining increased popular and political support, and in order to prevent such groups from becoming significant and powerful political actors. However, the evaluation and choice of liberty-limiting suppressive measures should be guided and restricted by two principles or side-constraints: the significance principle and the least restrictive means principle. (shrink)

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 361-375, October 2011.

English title: Kant and the Right to Vote The article is a contribution to the ongoing debate in NFT about the moral responsibility of voters. Kristian Skagen Ekeli has argued that politically ignorant citizens have a duty to abstain from voting. He argues that such a duty fol- lows from Kant’s duty to respect other persons. I analyze Ekeli’s proposed duties by considering how they might fit into Kant’s system of duties. I conclude, contra Ekeli, (...) that the Kantian duty to respect persons does not give rise to a duty for politically ignorant voters to abstain from voting. -/- Denne artikkelen er et bidrag til debatten om velgeres moralske ansvar. Kristian Skagen Ekeli har i to artikler argu- mentert for at uvitende borgere har en plikt til ikke å stemme, noe han begrunner ut fra en kantiansk pliktetikk. Det er imidlertid uklart hvordan en uvitende borgers plikt til å avstå fra å stemme skulle følge av Kants plikt til å respek- tere personer, noe Cornelius og Herman Cappelen kort antyder i sin kommentar til Ekeli. I denne artikkelen foretar jeg en analyse av de pliktene som Ekeli tar til orde for, og undersøker hvordan disse eventuelt kunne passe inn i Kants system av plikttyper. Jeg konkluderer motsatt av Ekeli, med at den kantianske plikten til å respektere personer ikke gir grunnlag for en plikt for uvitende borgere til å avstå fra å stemme i valg. (shrink)

This paper outlines a procedure for assessing the quality of failure explanations in engineering failure analysis. The procedure structures the information contained in explanations such that it enables to find weak points, to compare competing explanations, and to provide redesign recommendations. These features make the procedure a good asset for critical reflection on some areas of the engineering practice of failure analysis and redesign. The procedure structures relevant information contained in an explanation by means of structural equations so as to (...) make the relations between key elements more salient. Once structured, the information is examined on its potential to track counterfactual dependencies by offering answers to relevant what-if-things-had-been-different questions. This criterion for explanatory goodness derives from the philosophy of science literature on scientific explanation. The procedure is illustrated by applying it to two case studies, one on Failure Analysis in Mechanical Engineering (a broken vehicle shaft) and one on Failure Analysis in Civil Engineering (a collapse in a convention center). The procedure offers failure analysts a practical tool for critical reflection on some areas of their practice while offering a deeper understanding of the workings of failure analysis (framing it as an explanatory practice). It, therefore, allows to improve certain aspects of the explanatory practices of failure analysis and redesign, but it also offers a theoretical perspective that can clarify important features of these practices. Given the programmatic nature of the procedure and its object (assessing and refining explanations), it extends work on the domain of computational argumentation. (shrink)

New perspective on Heisenberg's interpretation of quantum mechanics for researchers and graduate students in the history and philosophy of physics.

The present study focuses on meeting online strangers face-to-face. This activity represents one of the least prevalent but also most feared online risks for youth. Due to the low number of youth experiencing upsetting meetings and the dominance of quantitative research designs in the area, the current state of knowledge does not provide a clear view of what happens at meetings that youths find upsetting. The aim of the present study is to enrich knowledge in this area by exploring such (...) upsetting experiences in more depth by using qualitative methodology. Based on 14 interviews with Czech girls aged 15 to 18, who reported upsetting meetings with online strangers, the study identifies the discrepancy between expectations and reality as the core reason for these negative feelings. There were several reasons for this discrepancy: different developmental phases, related different experiences with romantic relationships, and exaggeration of impressions formed online. (shrink)

What is the best way of assessing the extent to which people are aware of a stimulus? Here, using a masked visual identification task, we compared three measures of subjective awareness: The Perceptual Awareness Scale , through which participants are asked to rate the clarity of their visual experience; confidence ratings , through which participants express their confidence in their identification decisions, and Post-decision wagering , in which participants place a monetary wager on their decisions. We conducted detailed explorations of (...) the relationships between awareness and identification performance, looking to determine which scale best correlates with performance, and whether we can detect performance in the absence of awareness and how the scales differ from each other in terms of revealing such unconscious processing. Based on these findings we discuss whether perceptual awareness should be considered graded or dichotomous. Results showed that PAS showed a much stronger performance-awareness correlation than either CR or PDW, particularly for low stimulus intensities. In general, all scales indicated above-chance performance when participants claimed not to have seen anything. However, such above-chance performance only showed when we also observed a correlation between awareness and performance. Thus PAS seems to be the most exhaustive measure of awareness, and we find support for above-chance performance in the absence of subjective awareness, but such unconscious knowledge only contributes to performance when we observe conscious knowledge as well. Similarities and differences between scales are discussed in the light of consciousness theories and response strategies. (shrink)

It has become increasingly common for philosophers to distinguish between objective and subjective rightness, and there has been much discussion recently about what an adequate theory of subjective rightness looks like. In this article, I propose a new theory of subjective rightness. According to it, an action is subjectively right if and only if it minimizes expected objective wrongness. I explain this theory in detail and argue that it avoids many of the problems that other theories of subjective rightness face. (...) I end by responding to some objections. (shrink)

Book review: Alejandro Cassini & Juan Redmond (eds.), _Models and Idealizations in Science: Artifactual and Fictional Approaches_, Springer Iternational Publishing, Cham 2021, pp.xv+270.

This paper discusses trust between stakeholders, with special emphasis on a new theory from the social sciences and ends up by focusing on a multidimensional dilemma between trust and control. Harald Grimen, an influential philosopher, social scientist and ethicist in Norway, defined trust as a communicative action between a trust-giver and a trust-receiver, characterized by the giver taking few precautions. This first part of his theory provides the basis for a specified interpretation of trust as a collective undertaking among stakeholders (...) in modern organizations, such as financial companies, constituting chains of trust. The phenomenon of cooperation is fundamental in such chains. Grimen’s theoretical focus on trust as a single action, and on the chain of cooperation as several interconnected actions, represents a corrective to the psychological and individualistic profile of mainstream research on trust and converges toward principal-agent theories. The paper uses Grimen’s theory to work out a hypothesis about a chain of trust between stakeholders in the financial industry, promoting a multi-efficient cooperation between them. The multi-efficiency of chains of trust is also discussed in connection with the risk of violating different ethical norms. The risk brings to focus the corresponding need for chains of control as a means to reduce the risk of violations of norms. But the chain of control has not only this advantage, but also a disadvantage. The inefficiency of chains of control is a severe hindrance to the efficiency of the chain of trust, even if it reduces the risk of violation of norms. The paper ends by underscoring a multidimensional dilemma typical for cooperation between stakeholders in modern organizations, i.e. the fundamental dilemma between the advantages and disadvantages of both chains of trust and chains of control. (shrink)

Despite a long history of researchers who combine phenomenology with qualitative or quantitative methods, there are only few examples of working with a phenomenological mixed method—a method where phenomenology informs both qualitative and quantitative data generation, analysis, and interpretation. Researchers have argued that in working with a phenomenological mixed method, there should be mutual constraint and enlightenment between the qualitative and quantitative methods for studying consciousness. In this article, we discuss what a framework for phenomenological mixed methods could look like (...) and we aim to provide guidance of how to work within such framework. We are inspired by resources coming from research in mixed methods and existing examples of phenomenological mixed-method research. We also present three cases of phenomenological mixed methods where we study complex social phenomena and discuss the process of how we conducted the studies. From both the research inspiration and our own studies, we depict the landscape of possibilities available for those interested in mixing phenomenology with qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as the challenges and common pitfalls that researchers face. To navigate in this landscape, we develop a three-fold structure, focusing on the phenomenological frame, the phenomenologically informed generation of qualitative and quantitative data, and the phenomenologically informed analysis and interpretation of data. (shrink)

The paper addresses an understudied but highly relevant group of people within corporate organizations and society in general—the marginalized—as well as their narration, and criticism, of personal lived experiences of marginalization in business. They are conventionally perceived to lack traditional forms of power such as public influence, formal authority, education, money, and political positions; however, they still possess the resources to impact their situations, their circumstances, and the structures that determine their situations. Business ethics researchers seldom consider marginalized people’s voices (...) and experiences as resources to understand their lives, as demonstrated through a review of 7500 articles published in the Journal of Business Ethics and Business Ethics Quarterly (2000–2019). Only 78 studies included aspects of marginalized groups. 69 of those studies discussed the topic of marginalized groups of people, but without integrating their explicit voices into the text. Only 9 of the 78 articles featured marginalized people’s explicit voices about their marginalization experiences incorporated into the text as a source for exploration. None of the identified studies discussed the potential for theorizing based on such voices. This paper contributes to business ethics theory by developing four theoretical possibilities vis-à-vis the critical voices of marginalized people’s experiences in business: (a) marginalized theory on critical agency and freedom of speech; (b) the gatekeeping role of academia; (c) primary sources; and (d) a participative perspective. Discussing the theoretical potential of quoting the above voices can enrich business ethics research in terms of the theoretical understanding of marginalized groups in business. (shrink)

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to attempt to investigate how Information and Communications Technology researchers in UK computing departments address ethics in their research. Whilst research and innovation in ICT has blossomed in the last two decades, the ethical, social and legal challenges they present have also increased. However, the increasing attention the technical development receives has not been replicated in the area of developing effective guidelines that can address the moral issues inherent in ICT research.Design/methodology/approach– This research (...) is qualitative and made use of interviews. The data analysis was done with dialectical hermeneutics. Through a dialectical hermeneutic process, this research unpacks different understandings of relevance attached to ethics reviews of ICT research in UK computing departments.Findings– The findings include that ethics reviews are relevant because; it is a moral duty, it improves trust for researchers, it is part of risk assessment, it is in compliance with the law and it is a sustainable act.Practical implications– These various understandings illustrate an important dialectic process on the current state of the art in ICT research.Social implications– It asks to what degree the currently dominant model of ethics review based on biomedical ethics is optimal to ICT.Originality/value– It proposes a framework that can effectively help researchers and administrators to ensure responsible research and innovation in ICT. Finally, it identifies that ICT researchers would benefit from the developing repertoire of responsible research innovation. (shrink)

Scientific understanding is a fundamental goal of science. However, there is currently no good way to measure the scientific understanding of agents, whether these be humans or Artificial Intelligence systems. Without a clear benchmark, it is challenging to evaluate and compare different levels of scientific understanding. In this paper, we propose a framework to create a benchmark for scientific understanding, utilizing tools from philosophy of science. We adopt a behavioral conception of understanding, according to which genuine understanding should be recognized (...) as an ability to perform certain tasks. We extend this notion of scientific understanding by considering a set of questions that gauge different levels of scientific understanding, covering information retrieval, the capability to arrange information to produce an explanation, and the ability to infer how things would be different under different circumstances. We suggest building a Scientific Understanding Benchmark (SUB), formed by a set of these tests, allowing for the evaluation and comparison of scientific understanding. Benchmarking plays a crucial role in establishing trust, ensuring quality control, and providing a basis for performance evaluation. By aligning machine and human scientific understanding we can improve their utility, ultimately advancing scientific understanding and helping to discover new insights within machines. (shrink)

During recent decades various researchers from health and social sciences have been debating what it means for a person to be disabled. A rather overlooked approach has developed alongside this debate, primarily inspired by the philosophical tradition called phenomenology. This paper develops a phenomenological model of disability by arguing for a different methodological and conceptual framework from that used by the existing phenomenological approach. The existing approach is developed from the phenomenology of illness, but the paper illustrates how the case (...) of congenital disabilities, looking at the congenital disorder called cerebral palsy (CP), presents a fundamental problem for the approach. In order to understand such congenital cases as CP, the experience of disability is described as being gradually different from, rather than a disruption of, the experience of being abled, and it is argued that the experience of disability is complex and dynamically influenced by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Different experiential aspects of disability— pre-reflective, attuned and reflective aspects—are described, demonstrating that the experience of disability comes in different degrees. Overall, this paper contributes to the debates about disability by further describing the personal aspects and experience of persons living with disabilities. (shrink)

In this paper, I motivate and defend the distinction between an objective and a subjective moral sense of “ought.” I begin by looking at the standard way the distinction is motivated, namely by appealing to relatively simple cases where an agent does something she thinks is best, but her action has a tragic outcome. I argue that these cases fail to do the job—the intuitions they elicit can be explained without having to distinguish between different senses of “ought.” However, these (...) cases are on the right track—I argue that more sophisticated versions of the cases provide strong motivation for the distinction. I then discuss two important problems for the distinction: the “which ‘ought’ is more important?” problem, and the “annoying profusion of ‘oughts’” problem. I argue that each of these problems can be solved in several different ways. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate how inference to the best explanation (IBE) works in engineering science, focussing on the context of malfunction explanation. While IBE has gotten a lot of attention in the philosophy of science literature, few, if any, philosophical work has focussed on IBE in engineering science practice. We first show that IBE in engineering science has a similar structure as IBE in other scientific domains in the sense that in both settings IBE hinges on the weighing of (...) explanatory virtues. We then proceed to show that, due to the intimate connection between explanation and redesign in engineering science, there is a further engineering domain-specific virtue in terms of which engineering malfunction explanations are evaluated, viz. the virtue of redesign utility. This virtue entails that the explanatory information offered by a malfunction explanation should be instrumental in predicting counterfactual dependencies in redesigned systems. We illustrate and elaborate these points in terms of a number of engineering examples, focussing in particular on the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447. Our extension of analyses of IBE and explanation to engineering science practice offers new insights by identifying a new explanatory virtue in malfunction explanation: redesign utility. (shrink)

This paper presents a critical analysis of Tamar Szabó Gendler’s view of thought experiments, with the aim of developing further a constructivist epistemology of thought experiments in science. While the execution of a thought experiment cannot be reduced to standard forms of inductive and deductive inference, in the process of working though a thought experiment, a logical argument does emerge and take shape. Taking Gendler’s work as a point of departure, I argue that performing a thought experiment involves a process (...) of self-interrogation, in which we are compelled to reflect on our pre-existing knowledge of the world. In doing so, we are forced to make judgments about what assumptions we see as relevant and how they apply to an imaginary scenario. This brings to light the extent to which certain forms of skill, beyond the ability to make valid logical inferences, are necessary to execute a thought experiment well. (shrink)

Laguna Lake, the largest lake in the Philippines, supplies Manila's dense urban region with fish and water while operating as a sink for its stormflows and wastes. Transforming the lake to deliver these multiple urban ecological functions, however, has generated resource conflicts and contradictions that unfold unevenly across space. In Urban Ecologies on the Edge, Kristian Karlo Saguin tracks the politics of resource flows and unpacks the narratives of Laguna Lake as Manila's resource frontier. Provisioning the city and keeping (...) it safe from floods are both frontier-making processes that bring together contested socioecological imaginaries, practices, and relations. Combining fieldwork and historical accounts, Saguin demonstrates how people--powerful and marginalized--interact with the state and the environment to produce the unequal landscapes of urbanization at and beyond the city's edge. (shrink)

According to the standard view, the so-called ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum mechanics originated in discussions between Bohr and Heisenberg in 1927, and was defended by Bohr in his classic debate with Einstein. Yet recent scholarship has shown Bohr’s views were never widely accepted, let alone properly understood, by his contemporaries, many of whom held divergent views of the ‘Copenhagen orthodoxy’. This paper examines how the ‘myth of the Copenhagen interpretation’ was constructed by situating it in the context of Soviet Marxist (...) critique of quantum mechanics in the 1950s and the response by physicists such as Heisenberg and Rosenfeld. (shrink)

When consciousness is examined using subjective ratings, the extent to which processing is conscious or unconscious is often estimated by calculating task performance at the subjective threshold or by calculating the correlation between accuracy and awareness. However, both these methods have certain limitations. In the present article, we propose describing task accuracy and awareness as functions of stimulus intensity as suggested by Koch and Preuschoff . The estimated lag between the curves describes how much stimulus intensity must increase for awareness (...) to change proportionally as much as accuracy and the slopes of the curves are used to assess how fast accuracy and awareness increases and whether awareness is dichotomous. The method is successfully employed to assess consciousness characteristics on data from four different awareness scales. (shrink)

This paper investigates the concept of emotion and its relevance to education via character education through the medium of poetry. The objective is to demonstrate the potential implementation of character education through poetry, and to show the intrinsic link between poetry and virtue, knowledge and reasoning. It is argued that poetry serves as a bridge between emotion and character education. The philosophy of emotions is explored through the works of Aristotle, Karin Bohlin and David Carr. Character education is understood in (...) terms of a Neo-Aristotelian approach, drawing on Kristján Kristjánsson, Bohlin and Carr. My position is that, through exercising the craft of poetry, children and young students are provided with tools for exploring emotions, and for discerning and deliberating about virtues and moral contextual nuances in the broader context of human experience. (shrink)

W. D. Ross is commonly considered to be a generalist about prima facie duty but a particularist about absolute duty. That is, many philosophers hold that Ross accepts that there are true moral principles involving prima facie duty but denies that there are any true moral principles involving absolute duty. I agree with the former claim: Ross surely accepts prima facie moral principles. However, in this paper, I challenge the latter claim. Ross, I argue, is no more a particularist about (...) absolute duty than a utilitarian or a Kantian is. While this conclusion is interesting in its own right, it is also important, I argue, because it prevents us from overlooking Ross's criterion of moral obligation and because it may have implications on the broader debate between particularists and generalists. (shrink)

Comparison of behavioural measures of consciousness has attracted much attention recently. In a recent article, Szczepanowski et al. conclude that confidence ratings predict accuracy better than both the perceptual awareness scale and post-decision wagering when using stimuli with emotional content . Although we find the study interesting, we disagree with the conclusion that CR is superior to PAS because of two methodological issues. First, the conclusion is not based on a formal test. We performed this test and found no evidence (...) that CR predicted accuracy better than PAS . Second, Szczepanowski et al. used the present version of PAS in a manner somewhat different from how it was originally intended, and the participants may not have been adequately instructed. We end our commentary with a set of recommendations for future studies using PAS. (shrink)

After the cultural explosion of Web 2.0, digital culture reveals an apparently semiotic paradox associated with the incredibly widespread use of images of faces, while at the same time the reason to trust in the authenticity of these faces is constantly declining. This is because graphic technology has made the sophisticated manipulation of images both possible and easy. After a review of the existing semiotic models and considerations of trust, I am proposing a new approach which emphasizes the value-generating properties (...) of trust by analogy with the money sign, seen as “trust inscribed”. Research from the neurosciences supports the hypothesis that the trustworthiness of the face is judged pre-reflexively and primordially. This, therefore, means that a trustworthy face is a premise for more successful communication than an untrustworthy one, notwithstanding the object of discussion and the cultural context. An example concerning social media influencers serves to show that in the internet-dominated globalizing culture, trustworthy faces are a multipurpose communicative asset that makes a difference. (shrink)

How has ancient Greek thought been received within phenomenology? The volume offers chapters on Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacob Klein, Hannah Arendt, Eugen Fink, Jan Patočka, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida.