This paper examines whether having school students repeat a year improves their performance, focusing on learning English as a foreign language. It takes students’ English examination results from five years from a Chinese‐medium school, together with data on their learning styles and learning strategies. Drawing on local cultural and pedagogic factors, the study finds that repeating a year, far from improving scores, homogenizes the results of males and females, and, while finding a small but statistically insignificant rise in the scores (...) of females, is detrimental to the performance of males. Repeating a year either makes no difference or a negative difference to results. It is suggested that repeating a year reproduces, sharpens and potentiates gender differences in learning and performing in English as a foreign language, and that repeating a year is the medium and outcome of gender inequality. Implications are drawn for practice. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, virtual and augmented reality, (semi-)autonomous ve- hicles, autoregulatory weapon systems, enhancement, reproductive technologies and human- oid robotics – these technologies (and many others) are no longer speculative visions of the future; they have already found their way into our lives or are on the verge of a breakthrough. These rapid technological developments awaken a need for orientation: what distinguishes hu- man from machine and human intelligence from artificial intelligence, how far should the body be allowed to (...) be changed and what are the dangers and opportunities presented by these technologies? Many of these questions are also addressed to theology. For example, questions about the image of humanity, the understanding of creation, the ethics of technological body interventions or the moral status of robots. What does theology have to say about these technological developments? It is the right time for theology to scientifically explore tech- nologization and AI and to formulate answers. As technology changes the various areas of human life, society and the world around us, the places and topics of theology are also undergoing transformation. Puzio, Anna: Theology Meets AI: Examining Perspectives, Tasks, and Theses on the Intersection of Technology and Religion. In: Puzio, Anna/Kunkel, Nicole/Klinge, Hendrik (Hg.): Alexa, How Do You Feel About Religion? Theological Approaches to Technology and Artificial Intelligence (Theology and AI 1). Darmstadt: wbg 2023, S. 29–41. DOI: 10.53186/1030373. (shrink)

Enjoying great popularity in decision theory, epistemology, and philosophy of science, Bayesianism as understood here is fundamentally concerned with epistemically ideal rationality. It assumes a tight connection between evidential probability and ideally rational credence, and usually interprets evidential probability in terms of such credence. Timothy Williamson challenges Bayesianism by arguing that evidential probabilities cannot be adequately interpreted as the credences of an ideal agent. From this and his assumption that evidential probabilities cannot be interpreted as the actual credences of human (...) agents either, he concludes that no interpretation of evidential probabilities in terms of credence is adequate. I argue to the contrary. My overarching aim is to show on behalf of Bayesians how one can still interpret evidential probabilities in terms of ideally rational credence and how one can maintain a tight connection between evidential probabilities and ideally rational credence even if the former cannot be interpreted in terms of the latter. By achieving this aim I illuminate the limits and prospects of Bayesianism. (shrink)

On an evidentialist position, it is epistemically rational for us to believe propositions that are (stably) supported by our total evidence. We are epistemically permitted to believe such propositions, and perhaps even ought to do so. Epistemic rationality is normative. One popular way to explain the normativity appeals to epistemic teleology. The primary aim of this paper is to argue that appeals to epistemic teleology do not support that we ought to believe what is rational to believe, only that we (...) are permitted to do so. In arguing for that, I defend an epistemic teleological position that is radical in nature. It involves no commitment to aiming at the truth. I conclude by dispelling some worries that have been raised about my position. (shrink)

Many political theorists today deny that citizenship can be defended on liberal grounds alone. Cosmopolitans claim that loyalty to a particular state is incompatible with universal liberal principles, which hold that we have equal duties of justice to persons everywhere, while nationalist theorists justify civic obligations only by reaching beyond liberal principles and invoking the importance of national culture. In Liberal Loyalty, Anna Stilz challenges both views by defending a distinctively liberal understanding of citizenship. Drawing on Kant, Rousseau, and (...) Habermas, Stilz argues that we owe civic obligations to the state if it is sufficiently just, and that constitutionally enshrined principles of justice in themselves--rather than territory, common language, or shared culture--are grounds for obedience to our particular state and for democratic solidarity with our fellow citizens. She demonstrates that specifying what freedom and equality mean among a particular people requires their democratic participation together as a group. Justice, therefore, depends on the authority of the democratic state because there is no way equal freedom can be defined or guaranteed without it. Yet, as Stilz shows, this does not mean that each of us should entertain some vague loyalty to democracy in general. Citizens are politically obligated to their own state and to each other, because within their particular democracy they define and ultimately guarantee their own civil rights. Liberal Loyalty is a persuasive defense of citizenship on purely liberal grounds. (shrink)

In ‘Why Abortion is Immoral’, Don Marquis argues that abortion is wrong for the same reason that murder is wrong, namely, that it deprives a human being of an FLO, a ‘future like ours,’ which is a future full of value and the experience of life. Marquis’ argument rests on the assumption that the human being is somehow deprived by suffering an early death. I argue that Marquis’ argument faces the ‘Epicurean Challenge’. The concept of ‘deprivation’ requires that some discernible (...) individual exists who can be deprived. But if death involves total annihilation, then no discernible individual exists to be so deprived. I argue that the Epicurean Challenge must be addressed before it can be proven that Marquis is correct to claim that abortion and murder are wrong because they deprive someone of an FLO. (shrink)

On a common characterization, moral luck occurs when factors beyond agents’ control affect their moral responsibility. The existence of moral luck is widely contested, however. In this paper, I present a new challenge for deniers of moral luck. It seems that some factors beyond agents’ control—such as moral principles about blame- and praiseworthiness—clearly affect moral responsibility. Thus, moral luck deniers face a dialectical burden that has so far gone unnoticed. They must either point to a relevant difference between factors like (...) moral principles and the kind of factors that according to them do not affect moral responsibility or show how they can avoid having to point to such a difference. I argue that no obvious way to meet the challenge presents itself and that it thus amounts to a serious worry for deniers of moral luck. (shrink)

Difficulty is often treated as blame-mitigating, and even exculpating. But on some occasions difficulty seems to have little or no bearing on our assessments of moral responsibility, and can even exacerbate it. In this paper, I argue that the relevance (and irrelevance) of difficulty with regard to assessments of moral responsibility is best understood via Quality of Will accounts. I look at various ways of characterising difficulty – including via sacrifice, effort, skill and ‘trying’ – and set out to demonstrate (...) that these factors are only blame-mitigating where, and to the extent that, they complicate ascriptions of insufficient concern. Matters become more complex, however, when we turn to difficult circumstances that seem to generate such objectionable attitudes. This is arguably the case with epistemic difficulty and certain instances of moral ignorance. Here I argue that certain difficult circumstances diminish the sense in which false moral beliefs are genuinely revelatory of the agents who hold them. In particular, I draw on the distinction between difficulty that generates objectionable attitudes, and objectionable attitudes that generate difficulty. I argue that the former, but not the latter, can plausibly be viewed as blame mitigating, and that this would apply to (limited) cases of moral ignorance. (shrink)

This article describes a survey among Finnish business students to find answers to the following questions: How do business students define a well-run company? What are their attitudes on the responsibilities of business in society? Do the attitudes of women students differ from those of men? What is the influence of business education on these attitudes? Our sample comprised 217 students pursuing a master's degree in business studies at two Finnish universities. The results show that, as a whole, students valued (...) the stakeholder model of the company more than the shareholder model. However, attitudes differed according to gender: women students were more in favor of the stakeholder model and placed more weight on corporate ethical, environmental, and societal responsibilities than their men counterparts - both at the beginning and at the end of their studies. Thus, no gender socialization effect of business school education could be observed in this sense. Business school education was found to shape women and men students' attitudes in two ways. Firstly, valuation of the shareholder model increased and, secondly, the importance of equal-opportunity employment decreased in the course of education. This raises the question whether the educational context is creating an undesirable tendency among future business professionals. The results further suggest that the sociocultural context can make a difference in how corporate social responsibility is perceived. The article also discusses possible ways to influence the attitudes of business students. (shrink)

This article describes a survey among Finnish business students to find answers to the following questions: How do business students define a well-run company? What are their attitudes on the responsibilities of business in society? Do the attitudes of women students differ from those of men? What is the influence of business education on these attitudes? Our sample comprised 217 students pursuing a master’s degree in business studies at two Finnish universities. The results show that, as a whole, students valued (...) the stakeholder model of the company more than the shareholder model. However, attitudes differed according to gender: women students were more in favor of the stakeholder model and placed more weight on corporate ethical, environmental, and societal responsibilities than their men counterparts – both at the beginning and at the end of their studies. Thus, no gender socialization effect of business school education could be observed in this sense. Business school education was found to shape women and men students’ attitudes in two ways. Firstly, valuation of the shareholder model increased and, secondly, the importance of equal-opportunity employment decreased in the course of education. This raises the question whether the educational context is creating an undesirable tendency among future business professionals. The results further suggest that the sociocultural context can make a difference in how corporate social responsibility is perceived. The article also discusses possible ways to influence the attitudes of business students. (shrink)

One of the major divides in contemporary philosophy of consciousness is on whether phenomenal consciousness requires some form of self-consciousness. The disagreement revolves around the following principle (or something in the vicinity): : For any subject S and phenomenally conscious mental state C of S, C is phenomenally conscious only if S is aware of C. We may call the relevant awareness of one’s own mental states “inner awareness” and the principle “Inner Awareness Principle” (IA). In a paper recently published (...) in this Journal, Stoljar (2021) puts forward a massive theoretical criticism of IA. He addresses many extant arguments for IA, and argues, for each of them, that it is unpersuasive. In this paper, I focus on what strike me as the two most compelling arguments in Stoljar’s list: the argument from memory and the argument from attention. I argue that Stoljar’s objections to them can be rebutted; accordingly, those arguments promise to constitute the steadiest theoretical ground for IA. (shrink)

Louise Brown's birth in 1978 heralded a new era not just in reproductive technology, but in the relationship between science, cells, and society. For the first time, human embryos could be created, selected, studied, manipulated, frozen, altered, or destroyed, outside the human body. But with this possibility came a plethora of ethical questions. Is it acceptable to destroy a human embryo for the purpose of research? Or to create an embryo with the specific purpose of destroying it for research? In (...) an attempt to construct ethical and legal frameworks for the new era of cellular reprogramming, legislators and ethicists have tried to distinguish between different kinds of biological entity. We treat cells differently depending on whether they are human or animal, somatic cells or gametes, and on whether they are embryos or not. But this approach to the ethics of cellular reprogramming is doomed to failure for the simple reason that cellular reprogramming in itself destroys the distinctions that the law requires to function. In this article, we explore the historical trajectory of cellular reprogramming and its relationship with ethics and society. We suggest that the early hype of embryo research has not obviously fulfilled expectations, but since new avenues of research are continuously opening, it is hard to say definitely that these promises have been broken. We explore the forthcoming challenges posed by the creation of DNA from scratch in the laboratory, and the implications of this for understandings of identity, privacy, and reproduction. We conclude that while ethics used to seek answers in biological facts, this is no longer possible, and a new approach is required. (shrink)

There are problems with egoism as a theory, but what matters here is the point that intuitively ethics is thought to be about the good of others, so that focusing on your own good seems wrong from the start. Virtues are not just character traits, however, since forgetfulness or stubbornness are not virtues. Virtues are character traits which are in some way desirable. Criticism is generally renewed at this point on the grounds that claims about flourishing are now including claims (...) about virtue, and are thus no longer common ground to the defender and the critic of virtue ethics. But virtue ethics has never held that they are, so this is not a problem. It is only to be expected that the virtuous will differ from the nonvirtuous in their assessments of flourishing, because we are dealing here with virtue in the context of a formally characterized conception of flourishing. (shrink)

In ordinary conversation, we describe all sorts of different things as vague: you can have vague plans, vague ideas and vague aches and pains. In philosophy of language, in contrast, it is parts of language – words, expressions and so on – that are said to be vague. One classic example of a vague term is the word ‘heap’. A single grain clearly does not make a heap, and a million grains does make a heap, but where exactly does the (...) boundary lie? How many grains do you need to make a heap? There seems to be no precise answer to this question, and because the term is imprecise in this way, we call it vague. Vague terms are extremely common in natural language. The term ‘bald’ is vague, because there is no precise number of hairs that mark the boundary between ‘bald’ and ‘not bald’; the term ‘hot’ is vague because there is no precise temperature that something must reach to count as hot – and so on. As we have seen, adjectives can be vague, but so can nouns, adverbs and perhaps all parts of language. To find terms which are precise rather than vague, we need to look to the languages of logic and mathematics. We can use vague terms to construct paradoxes known as sorites paradoxes. From an obviously true premise, such as that a collection of 1 million grains is a heap, together with the claim that ‘heap’ has no sharp boundary, we can derive the absurd conclusion that just 1 grain counts as a heap. Any theory of vagueness must offer some solution to this paradox. Some of the most popular theories of vagueness include supervaluationism, the degree theory of truth and the epistemic theory, and many of the available theories demand a radical rethink of classical accounts of logic and language. (shrink)

In what sense, if any, are philosophers experts in their domain of research and what could philosophical expertise be? The above questions are particularly pressing given recent methodological disputes in philosophy. The so-called expertise defense recently proposed as a reply to experimental philosophers postulates that philosophers are experts qua having improved intuitions. However, this model of philosophical expertise has been challenged by studies suggesting that philosophers’ intuitions are no less prone to biases and distortions than intuitions of non-philosophers. Should we (...) then give up on the idea that philosophers possess some sort of expertise? In this paper, I argue that instead of focusing on intuitions, we may understand the relevant results of philosophical practice more broadly and investigate the other kind of expertise they would require. My proposal is inspired by a prominent approach to investigating expert performance from psychology and suggests where and how to look for expertise in the results characteristic of philosophical practice. In developing this model, I discuss the following three candidates for such results: arguments, theories, and distinctions. Whether philosophers could be shown to be expert intuiters or not, there are interesting domains where we could look for philosophical expertise, beyond intuitions. (shrink)

Nostalgia is a fond longing for the past that has been shown to increase feelings of meaning, social connectedness, and self-continuity. Although nostalgia for personal memories provides intra- and interpersonal benefits, there may be negative consequences of group-based nostalgia on the perception and acceptance of others. The presented research examined national nostalgia, and its effects on group identification and political attitudes in the United States. In a sample of US voters, tendencies to feel personal and national nostalgia are associated with (...) markedly different emotional and attitudinal profiles. Higher levels of national nostalgia predicted both positive attitudes toward President Trump and racial prejudice, though there was no evidence of such relationships with personal nostalgia. National nostalgia most strongly predicted positive attitudes toward president Trump among those high in racial prejudice. Furthermore, nostalgia's positive relationship with racial prejudice was partially mediated by perceived outgroup threat. Results from this study will help us better understand how the experience of national nostalgia can influence attitudes and motivate political behavior. (shrink)

This paper examines the ancient appeal to nature in ethics to support the account of the final end in life offered by the various schools from aristotle onwards. various modern objections against the appeal to nature are examined and found not to hold. as a result certain features of the ancient position emerge: the appeal to human nature is not an attempt to end ethical argument by appeal to undisputed fact; nor does it depend on a metaphysics which we can (...) no longer accept; nor is it meant to map out a specific way of life or set of ethical rules. it amounts to something like an appeal to moral psychology to set guidelines for a realistic ethical theory. a proper understanding of the ancient appeal to nature reveals the limits to some modern metaethical assumptions, and also the extent to which there may be more continuity between ancient ethics and some modern ethical thinking than is often assumed. (shrink)

Résumé -/- Anna Caterina Dalmasso L’artiste et l’adversité. Hasard et création chez Merleau-Ponty -/- À plusieurs reprises, Merleau-Ponty tisse une correspondance entre art et histoire, entre pratique artistique et action politique : plus précisément il nous invite à former le concept d’histoire sur l’exemple de l’art. À première vue, un tel rapprochement pourrait paraître abstrait, sinon provocateur, l’art étant souvent conçu comme un domaine qui semble avoir peu à faire avec l’espace de l’action. Mais, nous pouvons aujourd’hui comprendre davantage (...) l’intérêt de l’intuition merleau-pontienne, nous, qui faisons l’expérience de la connexion étroite entre l’univers visuel et le milieu politique ou historique, comme des dimensions devenues désormais inséparables. Au fur et à mesure qu’une conception positiviste de l’histoire ou de la politique entendue comme progrès, ou du moins comme projet, échoue sous nos yeux interdits, la question de l’historicité se fait de plus en plus urgente : Merleau-Ponty nous invite à penser l’histoire comme le « lieu de nos interrogations et de nos étonnements », le lieu d’une réponse, voire d’une responsabilité que nos organismes technologiques exigent. C’est à partir de l’expérience de la création artistique et de son rapport constitutif au hasard qu’une pensée de l’historicité peut s’élaborer, là où l’esthétique merleau-pontienne rejoint le mystère d’un sens historique et esquisse implicitement une éthique de la contingence, en ce qu’elle nous appelle à un exercice de la liberté. -/- Abstract -/- Anna Caterina Dalmasso The Artist and the Adversity. Chance and Creation in Merleau-Ponty -/- Throughout his works, Merleau-Ponty has developed the analogy between art and history, between art practice and political action: more precisely he invites us to think about the concept of history on the example of art. At first sight, such an equivalence could seem abstract, if not provocative, insofar as art is still sometimes regarded as a field having little to share with action. But today, experiencing the close connection between the visual and the political environment, we can understand, perhaps better than his contemporaries, what is at stake in Merleau-Ponty’s insight for a new comprehension of history. Whereas a positivist conception of history and politics understood as progress or project seems to be failing before our astonished eyes, the question of historicity becomes more and more urgent: Merleau-Ponty prompts us to think of history as a mysterious junction between facticity and intention, as the beginning of our wonder, as the place of the responsibility that our technological organisms demand. The experience of creation is the figure through which Merleau-Ponty tries to conceive contingency, which is the kernel of the Geneva conference, later called The Man and the Adversity. So, drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s constant reference to the operation of artistic creation, especially on the reference to El Greco, I aim at examining how a new conception of history can spring by a comprehension of the experience of creation. I will argue that, from the analysis of the relationship between the artist and the sensible, between the artist and her body, Merleau-Ponty comes to outline what I would call an ethics of contingency, insofar as it calls us to the exercise of our freedom. (shrink)

Commentary on Camilla Hawthorne's "Black Mediterranean Geographies.".

The Visible Medium. Opaque Interface and Non-Mimetic Immersivity -/- The relation of reciprocal co-implication that Merleau-Ponty formulates—and on which he insists throughout his work—between sense and the sensible, perception and expression, and then visible and invisible, transforms the way in which one conceives of the medium. Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetics reveals an idea of the medium as a support that erases itself in the act of conveying the signifi cation and also shakes the direct correlation between transparency and mimetic simulation. Understood as (...) the sensible thickness of the body opening onto the world, then as depth and écart that catalyzes vision, the medium, then, furnishes one of the defi nitions of fl esh, as the element of auto-mediation: connective tissue or fabric of communication that is at once écart and internal difference. Merleau-Ponty conceives of the medium as both that which renders and that which is rendered visible. It is therefore no longer an intermediary; it ceases to be an invisible mediator and becomes the opaque element that reveals in fi ligree the movement of gestaltic difference. It is from such a Merleau-Pontian conception of medium that one can begin to elaborate the complex issues posed by mediality in the post-medial age. The idea of a “visible medium” permits us to break with the confl ation of the simulation’s immersive effect and performance, which often informs the rhetoric concerning medias and new technologies, in order rather to think of an “opaque interface” or an “non-mimetic immersivity.” From such a conception of mediality we can equally understand the phenomenon of numerical convergence, not as the accomplishment of the suppression or dematerialization of the medium, as is the case with traditional theories, but as the point of departure for a return to the body as the condition of possibility for every aesthetic experience. (shrink)

This paper examines Simone de Beauvoir’s reading of the 18th century writer and libertine Marquis de Sade, in her essay “Must we Burn Sade?”; a difficult and bewildering text, both in pure linguistic terms and philosophically. In particular, Beauvoir’s insistence on Sade as a “great moralist” seems hard to reconcile with her emphasis, in The Ethics of Ambiguity, on the interdependency of human beings and her exhortation to us to promote other people’s freedom, as well as the aspiration of The (...) Second Sex to equal relations between the genders. While earlier scholars addressed the ethico-political implications of Beauvoir’s essay, they insisted that the ambiguity so fundamental in her philosophy is denied by the Sadean hero, and that the Other can never be attained in his system. In this essay, I argue that Sade paradoxically emerges as an ethical model in Beauvoir’s text: as a writer, he assumes the ambiguity of the human condition in the extreme. Further, Sade reveals the potential of sexuality if it is explored in a form of eroticism that largely transgresses behavior constructed as normal: his writings open up new forms of existence, where, contrary to prevailing ideas, woman’s sexual freedom is claimed as equal to man’s, where genders are unstable and heterosexuality no longer the standard. Beauvoir’s fascination with Sade in this essay can be linked with the seemingly unresolvable asymmetry in the relation between men and women in The Second Sex: in his writings is revealed sexuality’s potential to subvert patriarchal norms and mystifications, and perhaps, in the end, even gender itself. (shrink)

There is no doubt about the relevance of Cheryl Misak's Cambridge Pragmatism, the accuracy with which she has brought to light documents, diaries, manuscripts, and letters, the readability of her writing and at the same time the strength of her theses. One of the many merits of her remarkable work is, I think, the light she sheds on how Ludwig Wittgenstein was exposed to pragmatism in 1929, chiefly thanks to Frank Ramsey, and on how pragmatist seeds continued to shape his (...) later work, in spite of his open aversion to the pragmatist Weltanschauung. In what follows, however, I will only briefly touch on the subject of Ramsey and Wittgenstein (on which I expanded elsewhere: Boncompagni 2016a:... (shrink)

How do we talk about events we perceive? And how tight is the connection between linguistic and non-linguistic representations of events? To address these questions, we experimentally compared motion descriptions produced by children and adults in two typologically distinct languages, Greek and English. Our findings confirm a well-known asymmetry between the two languages, such that English speakers are overall more likely to include manner of motion information than Greek speakers. However, mention of manner of motion in Greek speakers' descriptions increases (...) significantly when manner is not inferable; by contrast, inferability of manner has no measurable effect on motion descriptions in English, where manner is already preferentially encoded. These results show that speakers actively monitor aspects of event structure, which do not find their way into linguistic descriptions. We conclude that, in regard to the differential encoding of path and manner, which has sometimes been offered as a prime example of the effects of language encoding on non-linguistic thought, surface linguistic encoding neither faithfully represents nor strongly constrains our mental representation of events. (shrink)

While the declared global “refugee crisis” has received considerable scholarly attention, little of it has focused on the intersecting dynamics of oppression, discrimination, violence, and subjugation. Introducing the special issue, this article defines feminist “intersectionality” as a research framework and a no-borders activist orientation in transnational and anti-national solidarity with people displaced by war, capitalism, and reproductive heteronormativity, encountering militarized nation-state borders. Our introduction surveys work in migration studies that engages with intersectionality as an analytic and offers a synopsis of (...) the articles in the special issue. As a whole, the special issue seeks to make an intersectional feminist intervention in research produced about (forced) migration. (shrink)

This article aims to establish an understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s view of creative expression, and of its phenomenological function, setting out from the intriguing statement in his essay “Cézanne’s Doubt” that the painter (or writer or philosopher) finds himself in the situation of the first human being trying to express herself. Although the importance of primary or creative expression in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is well known, there is no consensus among commentators with respect to how this notion is to be understood, and (...) of its apparently paradoxical relation to experience in his philosophy. On the one hand, Merleau-Ponty seems to presuppose that there is an original meaning pre-given in experience; on the other hand, expression is described as a hazardous enterprise, because the meaning to be expressed does not exist before expression has succeeded. In order to resolve this tension, I explore the significance of the precariousness of creative expression, arguing that it must be related to its other side: the constituted, all too often petrified meaning that we must start out from. (shrink)

Anti-pornography feminists have famously argued that pornography silences women: specifically, pornography causes women to be illocutionarily disabled in some real-life sexual contexts so that they are unable to refuse sex by saying ‘no’. Call this view Silencing. Some philosophers object to Silencing because it seems to entail that, in some cases, a rapist’s blameworthiness is significantly diminished. If the woman cannot refuse sex by saying ‘no’, and this allows the man’s belief, that she consents, to be rational, then the man’s (...) blameworthiness for rape is significantly diminished. The objection is that something must be wrong with a view like Silencing that allows rapists to escape the moral hook when, intuitively, they should not. In this paper, I defend Silencing from this objection by appealing to insights from the literature on moral encroachment in order to argue that it is not rational for the rapist to believe (or accept) that the woman consents. (shrink)

The burgeoning science of well-being makes no secret of being value laden: improvement of well-being is its explicit goal. But in order to achieve this goal its concepts and claims need to be value adequate; that is, they need, among other things, to adequately capture well-being. In this article I consider two ways of securing this adequacy—first, by relying on philosophical theory of prudential value and, second, by the psychometric approach. I argue that neither is fully adequate and explore an (...) alternative. This alternative requires thorough changes in the way philosophers theorize about well-being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Attis at Large CATULLUS (Translated by Anna Jackson) And so Attis, seasick, heart sore, having left so terribly fast, with a pause, a leap, a landing, galliambically arrived in the shady regions, wood-clothed, in the goddessy depths of dark in a rage, a grief, a wild mood, having come so terribly far, and himself, still him, he tore off, with a flint, all his manly parts— so that (...) she (now she) when she saw she was all a a a a girl, even while still bleeding fresh blood, a new stain on that shagpile earth, in a flash, a leap, with no pause, she took up here a tambourine— tambourine of yours, your symbol, sign of Cybele’s syllables— with a clash, a strike, a ringing, her soft fingers on the stretched skin, she began to sing this whole song, in a tremble to, to the throng: All of us, not cis, but sisters—with a leap of nothing but faith let’s take off, let’s rush, let’s stampede, like a herd on the, the, the loose— you are lost, you’re all in exile, with a past you have left behind you have only me, your one hope, here to lead, if you’ll follow me, after all that we have been through, salty seas of masculinity we will sail no more, no, not we—let us now be all spiritual, that’s to say, let’s sing, and sing loud, with a clash of the tambourine and with tossing heads and wild leaps, we must throw ourselves into this, as if in to fire, with no fear—a religious sort of a pounce! And in need of no persuading, the stampede, if it was that, starts— all of them, not cis, but sisters, taking off with a lightness of heart like a sisterhood, a herd loosed, with a clash of the tambourine. And so Attis, no true woman, was swept along with the rest, in the lead, but led, herself led, the clash of the tambourine a resounding beat in her head, fa-la-LA, la la la la LA, like a heifer still unbroken, a disorder of flailing flight. And the sisterhood, a herd loose, kept the beat of the tambourine. And the sisters, having found peace, could all sleep when the ringing ceased, having come so far, so hard won, they were restless no more but at peace, after all that they had been through, having come so terribly far. arion 27.2 fall 2019 Yes but when the sun with eyes bright looked out at the whole airy sky, and the whole expanse of hard earth, and the whole wilderness of sea, yes and when the sunlight drove forth all the shadows of the long night, and when sleep itself was sent off, or took flight, as Attis awoke, well then sleep, not Attis, found rest; it was sleep that would rest at last. Not so Attis: sleep departed, and his madness departed too; not so Attis, who reviewed all he had done, and all in his heart, and could see the lie it had been, and see all that the lie had cost, and with surging mind and heart sore made return to shallowing shore. And there Attis, seasick, heart sore, with sore eyes salty as the sea now addressed her country, grief struck, with this song, or more of a speech: Oh my country, nation, homeland, oh my country where I was born! Like a truant out of bounds—bounds like a palace, a place of peace— in a rage, a grief, a wild mood, did I take myself off to here, here to live in lairs of wild beasts, here to live in shivering snow, to inhabit my own madness, my insanity the worst lair of them all. Oh where can I now understand my country to be? My sore eyes both long to be fixed in a gaze shiverless on you, for a pause, a space, to come clear, and to clear what’s left of my mind. Do I have to leave, to have left, my own home, and live in the wild? Do I have to... (shrink)

The aim of the Nordic Network for the Archaeology and Archaeobotany of Gardening (NTAA), as it was phrased those first days in Alnarp in the beginning of March 2010, is to: ”bring researchers together from different disciplines to discuss the history, archaeology, archaeobotany and cultivation of gardens and plants”. We had no idea, then, how widely appreciated this initiative would become. The fifth seminar in five years was held on Visingsö June 1-3, 2014 and the sixth seminar will take place (...) in Kristiansand, Norway, June 12-14, 2015. We are very pleased to be able to publish this report, Sources to the History of Gardening: Four Interdisciplinary Seminars 2010–2013, Arranged By the Nordic Network for the Archaeology and Archaeobotany of Gardening (NTAA), based on the first four themes and seminars, in total 26 articles. Most of them origins from one of the seminar contributions 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 respectively. However, the editorial group has taken the opportunity, with the aim of the network in mind, to add supplementing contributions on some subjects. The articles are arranged in four themes according to the themes of the seminars. The first theme Archaeological Sources to the History of Gardens and the Cultural Landscape is linked to the first seminar in Alnarp, Sweden, 2010 which had a focus on method, the important connections between archaeology and archaeobotany and the interesting progress within garden archaeology during the last decade. The second theme Cabbage Patches and Kitchen Gardens deals with the second seminar in Norrköping, Sweden, 2011. Its focus was on historical, cultural geographical, archaeological and archaeobotanical research concerning utility gardens or kitchen gardens as well as the concept ‘kålgård’ (cabbage patch or kale yard), its shape and content over time. The third theme Cultural and Garden plants: Under Ground, Above Ground, In Herbariums and Archives connects to the third seminar in Uppsala, Sweden, 2012. It focused on sources, source criticism and interdisciplinary research to gain knowledge on the history of garden cultivation and cultural plants. The articles discuss, among other things, herbariums, written sources, DNA and molecular markers, pollen analysis and georadar. The fourth theme for NTAA’s annual seminar was Cultural Relict Plants and was held on Bornholm, Denmark, 2013. The focus on the seminar was on research and conservation of cultural relict plants, that is cultural plants which have survived in the same place for a long time after the actual cultivation has ceased. We dedicate this report to Kjell Lundquist (1955-2011) who were one of the initiators to this network and we hope it will inspire continuous research and new methodological discussions. (shrink)

Despite a “spatial imaginary” which constructs Europe as a location of sexual and gender freedom (Rao, 2014), presently, twenty countries in Europe require sterilisation in order to legally recognise transgender people’s gender identities, including four of the seven countries in the INFERCIT study: Greece, Italy, Turkey, and Cyprus (but not Spain, which since 2007 does not require sterilisation for gender identity recognition [see Platero, 2008]. In Bulgaria and Lebanon no gender identity recognition for trans people is provided by law; the (...) latter lies outside the “European” region) (TGEU, 2014). Compulsory sterilisation—classified as a crime against humanity in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (UN General Assembly, 1998: art. 7.1)—is widely in force against transgender people, who constitute “the only known group in Europe subject to legally prescribed, state-enforced sterilisation” (Hammarberg, 2009: 19). However, forced sterilisation of trans people is not generally conceptualised as a eugenicist or genocidal policy, in part because sterilisation is conflated with gender reassignment surgical interventions which, widely considered as that which brings transgender bodies into being, are in turn conflated with embodied transgender subjectivities. On this view, transgender individuals could not exist except through a medicalised process that, by design, precludes their “natural” reproductive capacities and is generally not accompanied by fertility preservation or the provision of assisted reproduction technologies (Plemons, 2014: 38; De Sutter et al., 2002; De Sutter, 2001). Sterilisation laws are justified through a pathologising discourse on transgender lives which constructs gender reassignment interventions as medical “treatment” of gender identity disorder (Suess, Espineira & Crego Walters, 2014: 73-76). Adopting a depathologising perspective enables us to contextualise compulsory sterilisation (which naturalises the sexually dimorphic, cisgender, heterosexual body) as a form of “gendercide” which has historically been instrumental in the imposition of a Euro-colonial binary gender system (Miranda, 2010; Lugones, 2007). The state-imposition of medical interventions on trans people not only has deleterious effects on their reproductive rights, “effectively undermin[ing] their right to found a family” (Hammarberg, 2009: 21; see OHCHR et al., 2014)—as “family” is hegemonically defined by a heteronormative and bio/ logical kinship order (Butler, 2002; van Anders, 2014). I argue that state regulation of transgender reproduction constitutes a form of institutionalised gendered violence inasmuch as it impedes transgender people’s ability to exercise inherent first-person authority over the materiality and meanings of their gendered embodiments (Bettcher, 2009; Spade, 2013). Efforts to renaturalise gender and kinship inextricably intersect (Kantsa, 2006) in the biopolitical attempt to regulate transgender embodiments and reproduction, which conditions the emerging legal recognition of transgender subjects as a rights-bearing minority (Stryker, 2014). (shrink)

Agricultural restructuring in Eastern Europe is a part of the restructuring of the economy as a whole. After democratic changes, Eastern European countries have fallen into a deep crisis. There are several reasons for this, including the large debt burden, decreased export opportunities, and monetary restrictions. The major reasons, however, are the lack of a clear economic policy at the governmental level and lack of confidence in the future of enterprises. In the industry and service sectors, ownership conditions are uncertain, (...) and this hinders investing from both private investors and managers of state owned enterprises.An unambiguous situation can be created only by rapid privatization. Privatization is slow and difficult, however, and there is no agreement even on its form.In agriculture, problems arise differently. Privatization there would mean giving up economies of scale. For widespread small farming, both capital and producer motivations are lacking as well. Working on state and cooperative farms with additional part-time farming has been a lifestyle of the people for decades. Apart from that, new smallholders, left on their own, could not survive falling domestic demand for agricultural products and decreasing export opportunities. Therefore, measures need to be implemented in order to reduce agricultural supply, labor, and land area.A feasible solution would be for socialist producer cooperatives to be transformed into real cooperatives, with cooperative and individual farming allowed to develop side by side. (shrink)

Scholars have long recognised the interest of the Stoics' thought on geometrical limits, both as a specific topic in their physics and within the context of the school's ontological taxonomy. Unfortunately, insufficient textual evidence remains for us to reconstruct their discussion fully. The sources we do have on Stoic geometrical themes are highly polemical, tending to reveal a disagreement as to whether limit is to be understood as a mere concept, as a body or as an incorporeal. In my view, (...) this disagreement held among the historical Stoics, rather than simply reflecting a doxographical divergence in transmission. This apparently Stoic disagreement has generated extensive debate, in which there is still no consensus as to a standard Stoic doctrine of limit. The evidence is thin, and little of it refers in detail to specific texts, especially from the school's founders. But in its overall features the evidence suggests that Posidonius and Cleomedes differed from their Stoic precursors on this topic. There are also grounds for believing that some degree of disagreement obtained between the early Stoics over the metaphysical status of shape. Assuming the Stoics did so disagree, the principal question in the scholarship on Stoic ontology is whether there were actually positions that might be called "standard" within Stoicism on the topic of limit. In attempting to answer this question, my discussion initially sets out to illuminate certain features of early Stoic thinking about limit, and then takes stock of the views offered by late Stoics, notably Posidonius and Cleomedes. Attention to Stoic arguments suggests that the school's founders developed two accounts of shape: on the one hand, as a thought-construct, and, on the other, as a body. In an attempt to resolve the crux bequeathed to them, the school's successors suggested that limits are incorporeal. While the authorship of this last notion cannot be securely identified on account of the absence of direct evidence, it may be traced back to Posidonius, and it went on to have subsequent influence on Stoic thinking, namely in Cleomedes' astronomy. (shrink)

In July 2016, we participated in a conference in Lesvos (Greece) on borders, migration, and the refugee crisis. The Crossing Borders conference was framed in contrast with the ad-hoc humanitarianism that was being implemented, to the extent that it seemed to offer an opportunity to think about the refugee crisis, militarism, and austerity capitalism in systemic terms. This paper is based on an intervention we staged in the closing panel of the Crossing Borders conference, where we read a statement we (...) collectively wrote with fourteen other participants. The intervention was the outcome of frustration as we saw stereotypes and dynamics of knowledge production that reproduced the division between "us" and "them," further marginalising migrants and refugees, elevating international experts while silencing locally affected people. We use this incident and the text of this intervention as a starting point to analyse the growing academic industry in relation to what has been constructed as "Europe's refugee crisis." Our intervention sought to contest several kinds of borders—linguistic, epistemic, activist, methodological, political, historical, and internalised— which are uncritically reproduced in this academic industry. (shrink)

Ontological reism remains a defensible metaphysical position, and Kotarbiński’s unwillingness to propose a more robust defence of his views has some identifiable historical causes, i.e. his post-war engagement in practical philosophy (both praxeology and ethics), more relevant in the context of a war-ravaged country. There is however one more reason why it remains difficult to justify the ontological part of the doctrine. Kotarbiński assumes indeed that “the fundamental justification of concretism is both naively intuitive and ordinarily inductive” (Kotarbiński 1958, 402). (...) Does this mean that no decent philosophical discussion can be proposed in defence of intuitively grasped ideas? Certainly not, as, once again, is shown by the contemporary works on qualia. Ontological reism should be pursued as a negative theory though, not as a positive one. This question of the burden of the proof was raised by Kotarbiński in 1966, surprised by the fact that it is the reist, the one who rejects imaginary entities, who is supposed to bring new evidence in favour of his positions, whereas those who assume their existence do not feel compelled to go beyond intuitive claims. It cannot rely on analysis of language alone, but has to engage in the investigation of the world. This idea is coherent with the naturalistic tendencies of Kotarbiński’s approach, even if they did not yield any substantial results on their own. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 489 Anna Romina Guevarra and Maya Arcilla The Source of Actual Terror: The Philippine Macho-Fascist Duterte  What is JUSTICE with the violence you’ve waged  What is FREEDOM? Our people are encaged  What is JUSTICE with the violence you’ve waged?  What is FREEDOM? Our people are encaged  We have nothing to lose—nothing but (...) our chains  We have nothing to lose—nothing but our chains  Ang tao, ang bayan—ngayon ay lumalaban  Ngayon ay lumalaban—ang tao ang bayan 1  We will, we will oust you!  We will, we will oust you! —Lyrics of a chant at a Chicago protest rally, July 8, 20202 On July 8, 2020, in front of the Philippine Consulate of Chicago, a group of activists representing multiple transnational organizations committed to the pursuit of democracy, participated in a Global Day of Action against an Anti-Terrorism Law (ATL) passed in the Philippines five days earlier. This particular rally was led by fierce student and community organizers and workers who loudly proclaimed their opposition to President Rodrigo Duterte’s misogynistic and fascist measures. The epigraph 1. The people, the nation—today they fight / Today they fight—the people, the nation. 2. Song written by Charmaine Balisalisa. 490 Anna Romina Guevarra and Maya Arcilla above captures the lyrics of one young activist’s chant directed at Duterte and choreographed to the tune of Queen’s “We will Rock You.” People followed her steps and gestures rhythmically and in unison, accompanying her chant with sounds from a gangsa (gong), bells, a skateboard tapping the ground, and an empty bucket. There have been multiple protests denouncing Duterte since he assumed power in 2016, but on this particular day, the sense of outrage and urgency was especially palpable in the face of this new law aimed at suppressing dissent. This legislation marked a high point in Duterte’s efforts to exert authoritarian control, and it is significant that opposition to his regime has taken on a specifically feminist character. The Philippines Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 (Republic Act No. 11479), signed into law on July 3, 2020, amends the Philippines Human Security Act of 2007 by expanding the government’s power and scope for defining what constitutes “terrorism.” It consolidates power through the creation of an Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) appointed by the President and empowered to act without oversight from the judiciary or legislature. The ATC can order mass arrests without warrants and detain individuals without due process for the mere suspicion of being involved in “terrorist” activities. This Law violates the Philippine Constitution’s Bill of Rights by eliminating free speech, violating the people’s right to privacy, and criminalizing individuals on suspicion of wrongdoing. As the law stipulates, anyone involved in “creating an atmosphere and spreading a message of fear” and “provoking or influencing by intimidation the government or any of its international organizations” will be construed as inciting terrorism. Indeed, this law will continue to erode democratic governance in the country, with some labeling it a “stealth declaration of martial law.”3 As US Congressional Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) noted at the press conference she convened on July 15 to publicly call for the Anti-Terrorism Law’s repeal, “this law represents a new weapon in the administration’s campaign to suppress dissent and will worsen attacks on ordinary people.” 3. Jodesz Gavilan, “‘Stealth Declaration of Martial Law’: Rights Groups Slam Duterte, Anti-Terror Law,” Rappler, July 3, 2020, https://rappler.com/nation /human-rights-groups-statements-duterte-signing-anti-terror-law. Anna Romina Guevarra and Maya Arcilla 491 “A Timeline of Terror”: From “Pride is a Protest” and #JusticeForFabelPineda to #HandsOffGabriela4 A number of prominent feminists and queer rights activists have been targeted under President Duterte in the lead up to the passing of the ATL. On June 26, twenty LGBTQ activists representing Bahaghari, an LGBTQ+ rights organization in the Philippines, were arrested at a Pride rally. These protestors, referred to as the “Pride 20,” were speaking out against the ATL and were immediately arrested.5 A few days later, fifteen-year-old Fabel Pineda from San Juan Ilocos Sur was gunned... (shrink)

Since the Phaedo characterizes Socrates’s death as a punishment by Athens, many scholars argue that he could neither have been responsible for nor have intended his death, so that his death was not suicide. This is no mere semantic quibble: the question turns on issues of responsible and intentional action. I argue that the dialogues portray Socrates as committing suicide. To do so, I use a Platonic account of responsibility and intention to show how Athens and Socrates were jointly responsible (...) for Socrates’s death and that his intention was not only to do what justice requires but also to kill himself. (shrink)

The question of whether or not people are part of nature is relevant to discuss humans’ role on earth and their environmental responsibilities. This article introduces the perspectival account of the concept of ‘nature,’ which starts from the observation that we talk about the environment from a particular, human perspective. In this account, the term ‘nature’ is used to refer to those parts of and events in the environment we perceive as being shaped by typically human activities. Humans themselves are (...) part of nature insofar as they participate in and are products of natural processes. Therefore, in this account, nature is not only the passive environment, but also something active and generative that does not operate human creativity, but rather and it in shaping our environment. According to the perspectival account, the ‘nature’ concept expresses a particular relationship between the human agent and the non-human environment, which can be the starting point for normative theory. (shrink)

Do powers have powers? More urgently, do powers need further powers to do what powers do? Stathis Psillos says they do. He finds this a fatal flaw in the nature of pure powers: pure powers have a regressive nature. Their nature is incoherent to us, and they should not be admitted into the ontology. I argue that pure powers do not need further powers; rather, they do what they do because they are powers. I show that at the heart of (...) Psillos’ regress is a metaphysical division he assumes between a pure power to φ and its directedness towards the manifestation of φ-ing, i.e. between a pure power and its essence. But such an ontological division between an entity and its essence has already been shown by Aristotle to be detrimental, condemning the entity to a regressive nature. I show that Psillos’ regress is but an instance of Aristotle’s regress argument on the relation between an entity and its essence. I compare Aristotle’s, Bradley’s, and Psillos’ regresses, showing that Bradley’s and Psillos’ (different) conclusions from the regress arguments lead to impasses. I then build on Aristotle’s directive against regressive natures, arguing with him that an entity is not other than its nature (being divided from its nature by a relation between them). Rather, an entity is an instantiated nature itself. The Aristotelian position I put forward explains how the oneness of the entity is achieved by its being an instance of a type. Thus, the regress is blocked, and the nature of pure powers is shown to pose no threats of an ontological or epistemological kind, if physics gave us reasons to posit pure powers. (shrink)

A wealth of social psychology studies suggests that moving in synchrony with another person can positively influence their likeability and prosocial behavior towards them. Recently, human-robot interaction researchers have started to develop real-time, adaptive synchronous movement algorithms for social robots. However, little is known how socially beneficial synchronous movements with a robot actually are. We predicted that moving in synchrony with a robot would improve its likeability and participants’ social motivation towards the robot, as measured by the number of questions (...) asked during a free interaction period. Using a between-subjects design, we implemented the synchrony manipulation via a drawing task. Contrary to predictions, we found no evidence that participants who moved in synchrony with the robot rated it as more likeable or asked it more questions. By including validated behavioral and neural measures, future studies can generate a better and more objective estimation of synchrony’s effects on rapport with social robots. (shrink)

Most people believe that death is bad for the one who dies. Much attention has been paid to the Epicurean puzzle about death that the rests on a tension between that belief and another—that death is the end of one’s existence. But there is nearby puzzle about death that philosophers have largely left untouched. This puzzle rests on a tension between the belief that death is bad for the one who dies and the belief that that death is not the (...) end of one’s existence. Many philosophers have responded to the Epicurean puzzle with the deprivation account of the badness of death, which seeks to make sense of the badness of death given that there is no life after death. This paper focus on the other puzzle, and advances the argument that the deprivation account can also make sense of the badness of death given that there is life after death. (shrink)

If political fake news is a serious concern for democratic politics, no less worrisome is scientific news with patently distorted content. Prima facie, scientific misinformation partially escapes the definition of fake news provided by empirical and philosophical analysis, mainly patterned after political disinformation. Most notably, we aim to show that people are often unaware not only of disseminating, but also of producing false or misleading information. However, by leveraging the philosophical and psychological literature, we advance some reasons for keeping scientific (...) misinformation under the same umbrella, broadening the definition of fake news in order to account for it as well. In concluding, we shall advance some ideas on how to reform scientific communication, which may help to address the issue of scientific misinformation. (shrink)

The scalar approach to negative polarity item (NPI) licensing assumes that NPIs are allowable in contexts in which the introduction of the NPI leads to proposition strengthening (e.g., Kadmon & Landman 1993, Krifka 1995, Lahiri 1997, Chierchia 2006). A straightforward processing prediction from such a theory is that NPI’s facilitate inference verification from sets to subsets. Three experiments are reported that test this proposal. In each experiment, participants evaluated whether inferences from sets to subsets were valid. Crucially, we manipulated whether (...) the premises contained an NPI. In Experiment 1, participants completed a metalinguistic reasoning task, and Experiments 2 and 3 tested reading times using a self-paced reading task. Contrary to expectations, no facilitation was observed when the NPI was present in the premise compared to when it was absent. In fact, the NPI significantly slowed down reading times in the inference region. Our results therefore favor those scalar theories that predict that the NPI is costly to process (Chierchia 2006), or other, nonscalar theories (Giannakidou 1998, Ladusaw 1992, Postal 2005, Szabolcsi 2004) that likewise predict NPI processing cost but, unlike Chierchia (2006), expect the magnitude of the processing cost to vary with the actual pragmatics of the NPI. (shrink)

Donald Davidson claims that, by studying the most general aspects of natural language, we will also be studying the most general aspects of reality.In particular, this means that, through the application of a systematic truththeory to natural language, we will be able to reveal its basic structure, its true logical form. Once this logical form has been spelled out, we will be able to determine the finite stock of important constituents of which sentences are built, and also the specific roles (...) these “atoms” play in the relevant structure. Since the structure of language can be said to “mirror” the structure of reality, this also means that we can now say something about the basic constituents of the world. We will be able to tell which kinds of entities exist and which do not. If, by spelling out the logical form, we find that there is a sentence (or several sentences) committing us to the existence of a certain (kind of) object (i.e. a sentence where an object (of this kind)serves as the value of a quantified variable) and, if we know the sentence to be true, then we have good reason to suppose that there is an object (of that kind) rather than not. This will hold given that there is no other way of spelling out the logical form of the sentence in question that is compatible with the nonexistence of that (kind of) object. So what exists is what, according to the (complete) theory, functions as values of the quantified variables, once thelogical form, the basic structure, of all the sentences of the language has been spelled out. Davidson has claimed that what all this quantificational structure will demand from ontology is the existence of objects and particular events. This should be taken somewhat at faith. In order to reach valid conclusions concerning the logical form of natural language, Davidson would have to examine allof its true sentences, and state allof their truth conditions, which he has not done. For practical reasons he has only been able to look at small segments of language, to consider how they normally function, to attempt to exhibit their logical structure by looking at entailment-relations, etc., and it is from this that he has drawn his ontological conclusions. In this paper, I concentrate on some of the likely consequences of the adoption of this method of reaching ontological conclusions. In particular, I will try to show that Davidson’s own way of arguing for the existence of events can be applied to cases where he seemingly would have to commit himself to the existence of properties too. To demonstrate this, I begin by considering whether the fact that Davidson spells out the logical form of natural language in first-order logic raises a serious objection to my claim or not. I then proceed by making a case for properties using an argument based on what Davidson has to say about the existence of events. What I will try to show is that, if Davidson is to be true to his general method of reaching conclusions regarding existence, which he claims to be, then he must go where this method leads him. This means that he has to keep his mind open as to the kinds of entities he should or should not allow. Finally, assuming that I have shown properties to be one of the different kinds of entities that a Davidsonian would have to allow, I conclude the paper by indicating what the consequence(s) of this may be. (shrink)

Natural language processing based on large language models (LLMs) is a booming field of AI research. After neural networks have proven to outperform humans in games and practical domains based on pattern recognition, we might stand now at a road junction where artificial entities might eventually enter the realm of human communication. However, this comes with serious risks. Due to the inherent limitations regarding the reliability of neural networks, overreliance on LLMs can have disruptive consequences. Since it will be increasingly (...) difficult to distinguish between human-written and machine-generated text, one is confronted with new ethical challenges. This begins with the no longer undoubtedly verifiable human authorship and continues with various types of fraud, such as a new form of plagiarism. This also concerns the violation of privacy rights, the possibility of circulating counterfeits of humans, and, last but not least, it makes a massive spread of misinformation possible. (shrink)

This essay replies to three critics of my book Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration. First, in response to Kit Wellman, I defend the claim that states sometimes have a right against external interference even when their decisions depart from the requirements of social justice. This “right to do wrong” is grounded in respect for a legitimate procedure of collective self-determination, in which the state's members have an important interest. Second, I reply to Michael Blake's concern that there is an inconsistency (...) in my treatment of people's actual wills in politics. I clarify that my view places weight on the actual wills only of “cooperators”, and that cooperators’ actual wills matter because they have claims against alien rule. There is no inconsistency in treating political annexation differently from immigration since immigrants rarely threaten to impose alien rule on cooperators. Finally, I address Adom Getachew's concerns about the imperial dimensions of the states system, arguing that my book contains resources for theorizing remedial claims to land in settler colonial societies and other reparative duties of global justice. (shrink)

Ancient ethical theories produce differing accounts of happiness, depending on their position on the nature and importance of virtue. These are important debates, recognizably on the same topic as modern debates about the nature and importance of morality. In the ancient debates Aristotelian and Stoic views can both draw on compelling arguments, and no simple resolution is obvious.

This essay takes issue with a common interpretation of Book II of Plato’s Republic as anticipating the modern theory of division of labour, first promoted by Adam Smith. It is argued that, far from anticipating Adam Smith, Plato developed original reflections which, though naturally shaped by the economic reality of his time, reveal a concern for fundamental issues of economic thought: the value of labour, the nature of economic interdependence in a political association, the relation between economic behaviour and justice. (...) However, despite having recognized some of the fundamental forces behind human economic behaviour, Plato ends up with an envisioned ideal state in which those forces are given no scope, for he makes no room for economic competitiveness and technological advancement. (shrink)

Online data collection with infants raises special opportunities and challenges for developmental research. One of the most prevalent methods in infancy research is eye-tracking, which has been widely applied in laboratory settings to assess cognitive development. Technological advances now allow conducting eye-tracking online with various populations, including infants. However, the accuracy and reliability of online infant eye-tracking remain to be comprehensively evaluated. No research to date has directly compared webcam-based and in-lab eye-tracking data from infants, similarly to data from adults. (...) The present study provides a direct comparison of in-lab and webcam-based eye-tracking data from infants who completed an identical looking time paradigm in two different settings. We assessed 4-6-month-old infants in an eye-tracking task that measured the detection of audio-visual asynchrony. Webcam-based and in-lab eye-tracking data were compared on eye-tracking and video data quality, infants’ viewing behavior, and experimental effects. Results revealed no differences between the in-lab and online setting in the frequency of technical issues and participant attrition rates. Video data quality was comparable between settings in terms of completeness and brightness, despite lower frame rate and resolution online. Eye-tracking data quality was higher in the laboratory than online, except in case of relative sample loss. Gaze data quantity recorded by eye-tracking was significantly lower than by video in both settings. In valid trials, eye-tracking and video data captured infants’ viewing behavior uniformly, irrespective of setting. Despite the common challenges of infant eye-tracking across experimental settings, our results point toward the necessity to further improve the precision of online eye-tracking with infants. Taken together, online eye-tracking is a promising tool to assess infants’ gaze behavior but requires careful data quality control. The demographic composition of both samples differed from the generic population on caregiver education: our samples comprised caregivers with higher-than-average education levels, challenging the notion that online studies will per se reach more diverse populations. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to show that a certain form of immortality, without the need for any intervention from a supernatural being, is almost inevitable for human beings. I take a physicalist starting point: I am a certain configuration of physical particles. Thus, if these particles were reassembled in the same configuration, I would necessarily come back into existence. I address a number of objections raised against this prospect by Eric T. Olson, who argues that the reassembly of such (...) particles following their dispersal after death would be simply impossible, and that if it did occur, it would necessarily be a mere replica rather than the real ‘me’. I suggest that the random redistribution of particles can be thought of as the throw of cosmic ‘dice’. With any specific throw, the likelihood that it yields the particular configuration that constitutes ‘me’ is vanishingly small. But over infinite spans of time, this likelihood increases until it becomes a near certainty. I show that even if this reconfiguration lacks the same causal features as those that gave rise to the original me, this cannot imply that the reassembled me is a mere replica. I acknowledge that my conjectured form of immortality may be unappealing to theists and non-theists alike. I also note that it rests on a linear conception of time, which may not harmonise with current thinking in physics. However, these issues notwithstanding, my conjectured version of immortality is at least as inexorable as many other things we take for granted, which also rest on potentially flawed beliefs about the nature of time and space. (shrink)

Combinatory logic (Curry and Feys 1958) is a “variable-free” alternative to the lambda calculus. The two have the same expressive power but build their expressions differently. “Variable-free” semantics is, more precisely, “free of variable binding”: it has no operation like abstraction that turns a free variable into a bound one; it uses combinators—operations on functions—instead. For the general linguistic motivation of this approach, see the works of Steedman, Szabolcsi, and Jacobson, among others. The standard view in linguistics is that reflexive (...) and personal pronouns are free variables that get bound by an antecedent through some coindexing mechanism. In variable free semantics the same task is performed by some combinator that identifies two arguments of the function it operates on (a duplicator). This combinator may be built into the lexical semantics of the pronoun, into that of the antecedent, or it may be a free-floating operation applicable to predicates or larger chunks of texts, i.e. a typeshifter. This note is concerned with the case of cross-sentential anaphora. It adopts Hepple’s and Jacobson’s interpretation of pronouns as identity maps and asks how this can be extended to the cross-sentential case, assuming the dynamic semantic view of anaphora. It first outlines the possibility of interpreting indefinites that antecede non-ccommanded pronouns as existential quantifiers enriched with a duplicator. Then it argues that it is preferable to use the duplicator as a type-shifter that applies “on the fly”. The proposal has consequences for two central ingredients of the classical dynamic semantic treatment: it does away with abstraction over assignments and with treating indefinites as inherently existentially quantified. However, cross-sentential anaphora remains a matter of binding, and the idea of propositions as context change potentials is retained. (shrink)