Humanist and scientific analyses of the Anthropocene concept may be distinctive as a coinvestigation across disciplinary borders. While scientists only in 2023 hypothesized the Anthropocene’s inception in the 1950s (as measured by atomic residue), humanists have for several decades been investigating the concept as a probable reality and argue for its longer chronology. The six books reviewed here identify the early modern period, especially the eighteenth century, as a convincing moment of transition, indicating a longer era of relevant anthropogenic activity. (...) This periodization has important implications for addressing the ongoing environmental crisis, which will require both humanist and scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Reinforcement learning has recently received much attention as a learning method for complicated systems, e.g., robot systems. It does not need prior knowledge and has higher capability of reactive and adaptive behaviors. However increase in dimensionality of the action-state space makes it diffcult to accomplish learning. The applicability of the existing reinforcement learning algorithms are effective for simple tasks with relatively small action-state space. In this paper, we propose a new reinforcement learning algorithm: “Q-learning with Dynamic Structuring of Exploration Space (...) Based on Genetic Algorithm ”. The algorithm is applicable to systems with high dimensional action and interior state spaces, for example a robot with many redundant degrees of freedom. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm simulations of obstacle avoidance by a 50 links manipulator have been carried out. It is shown that effective behavior can be learned by using the proposed algorithm. (shrink)

Reinforcement learning is very effective for robot learning. Because it does not need priori knowledge and has higher capability of reactive and adaptive behaviors. In our previous works, we proposed new reinforcement learning algorithm: “Q-learning with Dynamic Structuring of Exploration Space Based on Genetic Algorithm (QDSEGA)”. It is designed for complicated systems with large action-state space like a robot with many redundant degrees of freedom. And we applied it to 50 link manipulator and effective behavior is acquired. However optimality and (...) fault tolerance of the proposed algorithm were not considered and to demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed algorithm other applications are necessary. Acquiring of locomotion patterns by a multi-legged robot is a very interesting problem. As it has many redundant degrees of freedom, application of usual reinforcement learning is difficult and an optimal locomotion has not been acquired using previous reinforcement learning algorithm. And the redundancy of the robot is effective to the fault tolerance and various locomotion patterns can be acquired for adapting the faults of the legs. In this paper, we applied QDSEGA to acquiring of locomotion pattern by the multi-legged robot and considered the optimality and fault tolerance. Effective behavior has been obtained by using our proposed algorithm. (shrink)

This paper argues for a new understanding of Strawson’s distinction between personal, impersonal, and self-reactive attitudes. Many Strawsonians take these basic reactive attitude types to be distinguished by two factors. Is it the self or another who is treated with good- or ill-will? And is it the self or another who displays good- or ill-will? On this picture, when someone else wrongs me, my reactive attitude is personal; when someone else wrongs someone else, my reactive attitude is impersonal; and when (...) I wrong someone else, my attitude is self-reactive. Against this account, I argue that the basic reactive attitude types are better distinguished according to whether they express partial or impartial concern. This fits Strawson’s discussion in “Freedom and Resentment”, and it allows us to see an important point that the alternative approach obscures. Namely, while attitudes like resentment, gratitude, shame, and pride can arise as responses to our own treatment and behavior, they can also arise as third-party responses to the treatment and behavior of our family members, romantic partners, and close friends. Similarly, attitudes like moral indignation and disapprobation also have a wider scope than is often acknowledged; they can arise as responses to others’ treatment, but they can also arise as responses to our own treatment when we react impartially to circumstances involving ourselves. (shrink)

It has always been the fate of centrally important concepts in public debate to be used promiscuously. ‘Democracy’, for instance, has long been assigned multiple contested meanings; its meaning is univocal only in the minds of passionate advocates of a single political project seeking to monopolize usage of the term, whether Liberals or Leninists. Theorists tend to worry about this conceptual promiscuity more than practitioners, who, firing off loaded concepts in the heat of political battle, are impatient of reminders that, (...) perhaps, this or that concept is not being consistently used as originally intended. “No matter,” says the busy practitioner, “it is doing the job I currently intend.” This reply is often justified: scholarly intrusions into public debate are sometimes appropriately dubbed ‘academic’ . However, when rhetorical skirmishes cease and a concept gets to be embedded in public policy or legislation, clarity is indispensable.This, of course, summarizes the recent career of the concept of ‘subsidiarity’, which has been nominated as possibly ‘the most contentious abstract noun to have entered European politics since 1789’ . Advocates of both centralization and decentralization currently invoke it with the same firmness of conviction. Its inclusion in the Maastricht Treaty, far from having generated clear guidelines on how to determine the proper balance between European and national competences, has only served to highlight the competing interpretations which it can, apparently, bear. ‘Subsidiarity’ is suffering from a ‘clarity deficit’ which needs remedying. My aim in what follows is to contribute to that process of clarification and to suggest ways in which the concept might be critically developed.First, I attempt to retrieve the original meaning of subsidiarity and exhibit its intrinsic relationships to related concepts of community and the common good. I seek to show that subsidiarity is only one aspect of a broader theory, rooted in Catholic social thought, of the proper relationship between persons and communities. Subsidiarity takes its meaning from an elaborate social theory which is personalist, pluralist and communitarian. Charges of vacuity against subsidiarity are only to be expected when the concept is treated in isolation from this background theory. Second, I identify and attempt to remedy certain deficiencies of the concept by critically elaborating what I take to be its central intent. In a brief conclusion, I indicate the need to bring the concept into dialogue with alternative models of the person-community relationship. (shrink)

This paper challenges a common dogma of the literature on forgiveness: that only victims have the standing to forgive. Attacks on third-party forgiveness generally come in two forms. One form of attack suggests that it follows from the nature of forgiveness that third-party forgiveness is impossible. Another form of attack suggests that although third-party forgiveness is possible, it is always improper or morally inappropriate for third parties to forgive. I argue against both of these claims; third-party forgiveness is possible, and (...) in some cases it is morally appropriate for third parties to forgive (or refuse to forgive) wrongdoers for wrongs done to victims. I also propose an explanation of third parties’ standing to forgive: third parties have the standing to forgive when it is appropriate for them to take wrongs done to victims ‘personally’. While appropriately ‘taking a wrong personally’ does not require seeing oneself as a victim, it typically does require being in some form of personal relationship with victims. Thus, while the standing to forgive is not grounded exclusively in having been wronged, the prerogative to forgive is normally limited to victims and their loved ones. And once we recognize the importance of third-party forgiveness in our moral lives and the norms that govern it, we can more easily adjudicate between competing accounts of the nature of forgiveness.​. (shrink)

The twentieth-century Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd left behind an impressive canon of philosophical works and has continued to influence a scholarly community in Europe and North America, which has extended, critiqued, and applied his thought in many academic fields. Jonathan Chaplin introduces Dooyeweerd for the first time to many English readers by critically expounding Dooyeweerd's social and political thought and by exhibiting its pertinence to contemporary civil society debates. Chaplin begins by contextualizing Dooyeweerd's thought, first in relation to (...) present-day debates and then in relation to the work of the Dutch philosopher Abraham Kuyper. Chaplin outlines the distinctive theory of historical and cultural development that serves as an essential backdrop to Dooyeweerd's substantive social philosophy; examines Dooyeweerd's notion of societal structural principles; and sets forth his complex classification of particular types of social structure and their various interrelationships. Chaplin provides a detailed examination of Dooyeweerd's theory of the state, its definitive nature, and its proper role vis-a-vis other elements of society. Dooyeweerd's contributions, Chaplin concludes, assist us in mapping the ways in which state and civil society should be related to achieve justice and the public good. "This superb study simultaneously introduces and critically engages the work of one of the most important and neglected Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, while showing its connection to the pluralist tradition and bringing it to bear on the contemporary debate about civil society. More than just providing an overview of Dooyeweerd's thought, it seeks to advance his intellectual project and show its contemporary relevance. It is essential reading not only for those interested in the neo-Calvinist tradition, but for anyone interested in Christian social thought, structural pluralism, or the nature and fate of civil society." --_Kenneth L. Grasso, Texas State University _ "The subtlety, scope, and insightfulness of Dooyeweerd's social philosophy were unparalleled among Protestant thinkers in the past century. Yet his contributions are not well known. Jonathan Chaplin promises to remedy this neglect. His lucid and masterful study brings a new and transformative voice to contemporary debates about the future of a democratic society." --_Lambert Zuidervaart, Institute for Christian Studies and University of Toronto_ "Finally, an authoritative book that brings to brilliant light and life Herman Dooyeweerd's Christian philosophy of law, politics, and society. For the past half century, the profound and original teachings of this prolific Dutch sage have been lost on most readers. Jonathan Chaplin has rescued Dooyeweerd from his own obscure prose, poor translations, and cultic mystique to reveal his astonishing and engaging insights into our lives as persons and peoples, rulers and citizens, preachers and parishioners, parents and children. This will be the go-to book on Dooyeweerd for many years to come." --_John Witte, Jr., Emory University_ "Herman Dooyeweerd was both deep and original. Much of his writing is an articulation of rather undeveloped lines of thought in his Dutch predecessor, Abraham Kuyper. In the course of his exposition, Chaplin effectively highlights Dooyeweerd's significance for a theory of civil society and for present-day social theory in general." --_Nicholas Wolterstorff, Yale University and the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Virginia_. (shrink)

Most interpreters hold that Kant rejects actually infinite tota synthetica as conceptually impossible. This view is attributed to Kant to relieve him of the charge that the first antinomy’s thesis argument presupposes transcendental idealism. I argue that important textual evidence speaks against this view, and Kant in fact affirms the conceptual possibility of actually infinite tota synthetica. While this means the first antinomy may not be decisive as an indirect argument for idealism, it gives us a better account of how (...) our ideas of the unconditioned generate the antinomies, and it allows us to see important and often overlooked elements in Kant’s account of the infinite. (shrink)

Small but significant gender differences in emotion expressions have been reported for adults, with women showing greater emotional expressivity, especially for positive emotions and internalizing negative emotions such as sadness. But when, developmentally, do these gender differences emerge? And what developmental and contextual factors influence their emergence? This article describes a developmental bio-psycho-social model of gender differences in emotion expression in childhood. Prior empirical research supporting the model, at least with mostly White middle-class U.S. samples of youth, is presented. Limitations (...) to the extant literature and future directions for research on gender and child emotion are suggested. (shrink)

‘Public justice’ is one of the most widely-invoked of the many distinctive terms coined by Herman Dooyeweerd but, strangely, one of the least well analysed. Dooyeewerd holds that that the identity of the state is defined by a single, integrating and directing norm, the establishment of ‘public justice’. Elaborating the implications of this claim has occupied much neo-Calvinist political reflection and guided much political action inspired by that movement. Yet surprisingly little sustained theoretical reflection has been devoted in recent times (...) to examining its inner meaning and coherence. This article offers some preliminary groundwork necessary to that theoretical project. The first part presents a close reading of Dooyeweerd’s account of public justice, identifies ambiguities and inconsistencies in that account, and suggests a reconstruction displaying its wide-ranging dynamic thrust more prominently. The second part identifies two substantial challenges confronting this account: its relative neglect of processes of democratic deliberation and advocacy, and its underdeveloped critical potentials. (shrink)

Drawing on theories of institutional evolution, this article contends that despite the centrality of occupationally based social insurance in postwar Korea and Taiwan, the welfare state has in fact deepened considerably. The analysis is structured around three distinct eras of social policy reform in Korea and Taiwan: the developmental state, democratic transition, and postindustrialism. The authors contend that during each of these eras, the institutional purposes of social policy were altered to meet certain socioeconomic objectives. New institutional purposes were grafted (...) onto the prevailing social insurance model, changing the outcomes of social policy. The developmental state era was productivist in purpose, democratic reform during the 1980s reoriented social insurance toward universalist and redistributive principles, and the post-1997 era refocused social insurance to meet the imperatives of flexible labor markets, demographic shifts, and economic globalization. (shrink)

Intelligent humanoid robots (IHRs) are becoming likely to be integrated into nursing practice. However, a proper integration of IHRs requires a detailed description and explanation of their essential capabilities, particularly regarding their competencies in replicating and portraying emotive functions such as empathy. Existing humanoid robots can exhibit rudimentary forms of empathy; as these machines slowly become commonplace in healthcare settings, they will be expected to express empathy as a natural function, rather than merely to portray artificial empathy as a replication (...) of human empathy. This article works with a twofold purpose: firstly, to consider the impact of artificial empathy in nursing and, secondly, to describe the influence of Affective Developmental Robotics (ADR) in anticipation of the empathic behaviour presented by artificial humanoid robots. The ADR has demonstrated that it can be one means by which humanoid nurse robots can achieve expressions of more relatable artificial empathy. This will be one of the vital models for intelligent humanoid robots currently in nurse robot development for the healthcare industry. A discussion of IHRs demonstrating artificial empathy is critical to nursing practice today, particularly in healthcare settings dense with technology. (shrink)

In 1951, the eight o’clock nightly news reported on Jean-Paul Sartre for the first time. By the end of the twentieth century, more than 3,500 programs dealing with philosophy and its practitioners—including Bachelard, Badiou, Foucault, Lyotard, and Lévy—had aired on French television. According to Tamara Chaplin, this enduring commitment to bringing the most abstract and least visual of disciplines to the French public challenges our very assumptions about the incompatibility of elite culture and mass media. Indeed, it belies the (...) conviction that television is inevitably anti-intellectual and the quintessential archenemy of the book. Chaplin argues that the history of the televising of philosophy is crucial to understanding the struggle over French national identity in the postwar period. Linking this history to decolonization, modernization, and globalization, _Turning On the Mind _claims that we can understand neither the markedly public role that philosophy came to play in French society during the late twentieth century nor the renewed interest in ethics and political philosophy in the early twenty-first unless we acknowledge the work of television. Throughout, Chaplin insists that we jettison presumptions about the anti-intellectual nature of the visual field, engages critical questions about the survival of national cultures in a globalizing world, and encourages us to rethink philosophy itself, ultimately asserting that the content of the discipline is indivisible from the new media forms in which it has found expression. (shrink)

Famously, Kant describes space and time as infinite “given” magnitudes. An influential interpretative tradition reads this as a claim about phenomenological presence to the mind: in claiming that space and time are given, this reading holds, Kant means to claim that we have phenomenological access to space and time in our original intuitions of them. In this paper, I argue that we should instead understand givenness as a metaphysical notion. For Kant, space and time are ‘given’ in virtue of three (...) related facts: (i) they are necessary grounds of the existence of all other spatial and temporal possibilities; (ii) in virtue of being such grounds, they are metaphysically linked to all other represented spatiotemporal things; and (iii) as representations, space and time issue from the nature of our faculty of sensibility rather than from an arbitrary act of choice. Understanding givenness in this non-epistemological way helps us recover what is plausible in both ‘intellectualist’ and ‘anti-intellectualist’ readings of the Transcendental Aesthetic. Anti-intellectualists are correct that space and time are given in mere sensibility, but intellectualists are correct that we depend on the understanding for consciousness of space and time. (shrink)

The notion of societal structural principles is the foundation stone of Dooyeweerd’s social philosophy, and of the political and legal philosophy grounded in it, yet it has so far received little detailed critical analysis or constructive reformulation among reformational scholars. The aim of this paper is the modest one of illustrating the kind of analysis still to be done if the notion is to be put to more constructive use within social theory. I shall say little about the epistemological or (...) methodological implications of the notion, concentrating on its central ontological problematics. I shall do so by discussing the notion with special reference to its specific application to one particular societal structure, namely the state. Part I analyses Dooyeweerd’s general account of the notion of societal structural principles. I identify there a number of critical problems running through the paper, especially: a) the problem of how structural principles secure the internal unity of a societal structure; b) the distinction between the invariant character of societal structural principles, and the variable forms in which they are positivised; and c) the undeveloped link between societal structures and the structure of the human person. Part II illustrates these problems in relation to Dooyeweerd’s account of the structural principle of the state. Part III briefly sketches the direction of a possible reformulation of the notion of societal structural principles in the light of a more fully elaborated philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

Die neuere Naturwissenschaft trat im 17. Jahrhundert zuerst als “Physik” auf. Man soll sich an die Gründung der modernen Dynamik von Galileo und Newton erinnern.Die methodisch-allgemeine Grundlegung dieser neuen Wissenschaft wird in der Cartesischen Philosophie am klarsten ausgedrückt.