Corporate social responsibility positively impacts relationships between firms and customers. Previous research construes this as an outcome of customers’ warm glow that results from supporting firms’ benevolence. The current research demonstrates that beyond warm glow, CSR positively impacts firms’ sales through mitigating their customers’ perceptions of purchase risk. We demonstrate this effect across three conditions in which customers’ perceived risk of purchase is heightened, using both secondary data and two lab experiments. Under conditions of greater purchase (...) risk, CSR positively impacts both sales and customer purchase intentions to a greater extent than in conditions of lower purchase risk. In addition to measuring purchase risk as the mediating process behind these effects, we demonstrate that the effect of CSR on sales is stronger for those CSR activities that signal a stakeholder orientation. (shrink)

Giving money to others feels good. It is now standard to use the label ‘warm glow feelings’ to refer to the pleasure people take from giving. But what exactly are warm glow feelings? And why do people experience them? To answer these questions, we ran two studies: a recall task in which participants were asked to remember a donation they made, and a donation task in which participants were given the opportunity to make a donation before (...) reporting their affective states. Correlational and experimental results converge towards the conclusion that, if the nature of the warm glow is straightforward, its source is multifaceted. Regarding the nature of the ‘warm glow’, the pleasure people took in giving was mainly predicted by one particular type of positive emotion and was indeed described by participants as ‘warm’. Regarding the underlying psychological mechanisms, warm glow feelings were elicited by positive appraisals regarding the donor’s moral character, positive appraisals regarding the actual impact of the donor’s donation on the welfare of others and a feeling of communion with others. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings. (shrink)

Giving money to others feels good. In the past years, this claim has received strong empirical support from psychology and neuroscience. It is now standard to use the label ‘warm glow feelings’ to refer to the pleasure people take from giving, and many explanations of apparently altruistic behavior appeal to these internal rewards. But what exactly are warm glow feelings? Why do people experience them? In order to further our understanding of the phenomenon, we ran two (...) studies: a recall task in which participants were asked to remember a donation they made, and a donation task in which participants were given the opportunity to make a donation before reporting their affective states. In both studies, correlational and experimental evidence converge towards the conclusion that, if the nature of the warm glow is straightforward, its source is multifaceted. Regarding the nature of ‘warm glow’, the pleasure people took in giving was mainly predicted by one particular positive emotion (‘joyful feelings’) and was indeed described by participants as a ‘warm’ sensation. Regarding the underlying psychological mechanisms, ‘warm glow’ feelings were elicited both by positive appraisals regarding the donor’s moral character and positive appraisals regarding the actual impact of the donor’s donation on the welfare of others. We discuss the implications of these findings for the role of positive emotions in explaining why people give. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the question of whether and how social class and status affect prosocial behavior among status groups.We conducted dictator games in which both host-country citizens as well as asylum seekers make monetary donations towards their respective in- and out-groups. As a novelty, we varied the number of recipients in the dictator game. Our results indicate that host-country citizens donate significantly more than asylum seekers and that asylum seekers receive significantly higher donations than host-country citizens. Donations vary (...) only marginally with the number of recipients. These findings and answers to a follow-up questionnaire show that prosocial behavior among status groups, and in particular prosocial behavior from high-status towards low-status actors, might be instances of impure altruism, i.e., motivated by a warm glow of giving or a purchase of moral satisfaction. (shrink)

In this study, we investigated whether background information of a visual charity appeal can influence people’s motivation to donate and the hypothetical amount donated. Specifically, participants were presented with a charity appeal to help a local hospital respond to the Coronavirus Disease-19 emergency depicting a man sitting on a bed in a hospital room. The number of visual details depicted in the background was manipulated according to three conditions: “High information” condition, “low information” condition, and “no information” condition. We investigated (...) whether the number of visual background details would have increased the tangibility of the cause measured as the hospital’s adequate preparedness to deal with the COVID-19 emergency and severity of the patient’s medical conditions. We also investigated whether increased tangibility, elicited by a higher amount of background information, would heighten participants’ perceived impact of their donation and warm glow, which in turn would have led to increased motivation to donate and the amount donated. We found no significant direct effect of condition on the donated amount. However, path models revealed that more background information positively influenced participants’ motivation to donate and the amount donated indirectly through increased tangibility, impact, and warm glow. Finally, we showed that a higher risk perception of COVID-19 was associated with higher donations. Results are discussed in line with relevant literature. (shrink)

The community has legislatively conferred on external auditors a special but lucrative responsibility to provide fair and independent opinions about management''s preparation of company financial statements. In return, auditors are obliged by professional standards to act with integrity, independently and in the public interest. This study examined 174 auditors'' predisposition to provide just and fair judgements, using Kohlberg''s theory of developmental moral reasoning, one of the most widely accepted theories in justice psychology. Respondents came from five international audit firms in (...) Copenhagen. Results indicated that auditors with pre-conventional or low level of just reasoning or comprised 64 respondents, the largest group in the sample. The pre-conventional level suggests that people will act in their own self-interest and do the right only to avoid punishment. Pre-conventional auditors have the ability to "do deals", advantageous for business. When faced with an ethical crisis, however, auditors as this level will tend to focus on their own needs at the expense of others. The post-conventional or mid level of just reasoning comprised 59 auditors, second largest group in the sample. This level indicates that these auditors have the predisposition to act fairly on principal, particularly when faced with an ethical crisis. The conventional level or mid-just reasoning consisted of 51 auditors. People with a conventional level of just reasoning believe in law and order, the maintenance of the status quo, however they tend not to be critical of laws, nor authority even if those laws and authority are unjust or evil. (shrink)

This paper presents results from a modified dictator experiment aimed at distinguishing and quantifying intrinsic motivations for giving. We employ an experimental design with three treatments that vary the recipient and amount passed. We find giving to the experimenter not to be significantly different from giving to a charity, when the amount the subject donates crowds out the amount donated by the experimenter such that the charity always receives a fixed amount. This result suggests that the latter treatment, first used (...) by Crumpler and Grossman :1011–1021, 2008), does not provide a clean test of warm glow motivation. We then propose a new method of detecting warm glow motivation based on the idea that in a random-lottery incentive scheme, such as the one we employ, warm glow accumulates and this may lead to satiation, whereas purely altruistic motivation does not. We also provide bounds on the magnitudes of warm glow and pure altruism as motives that drive giving in our experiment. (shrink)

Cognitive dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease is caused by disturbances in neuronal circuits of the brain underpinned by synapse loss, neuronal dysfunction and neuronal death. Amyloid beta and tau protein cause these pathological changes and enhance neuroinflammation, which in turn modifies disease progression and severity. Vagal nerve stimulation, via activation of the locus coeruleus, results in the release of catecholamines in the hippocampus and neocortex, which can enhance synaptic plasticity and reduce inflammatory signalling. Vagal nerve stimulation has shown promise to enhance (...) cognitive ability in animal models. Research in rodents has shown that VNS can have positive effects on basal synaptic function and synaptic plasticity, tune inflammatory signalling, and limit the accumulation of amyloid plaques. Research in humans with invasive and non-invasive VNS devices has shown promise for the modulation of cognition. However, the direct stimulation of the vagus nerve afforded with the invasive procedure carries surgical risks. In contrast, non-invasive VNS has the potential to be a broadly available therapy to manage cognitive symptoms in early AD, however, the magnitude and specificity of its effects remains to be elucidated, and the non-inferiority of the effects of non-invasive VNS as compared with invasive VNS still needs to be established. Ongoing clinical trials with healthy individuals and patients with early AD will provide valuable information to clarify the potential benefits of non-invasive VNS in cognition and AD. Whether invasive or non-invasive VNS can produce a significant improvement on memory function and whether its effects can modify the progression of AD will require further investigation. (shrink)

In recent years, firms have greatly increased the amount of resources allocated to activities classified as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). While an increase in CSR expenditure may be consistent with firm value maximization if it is a response to changes in stakeholders' preferences, we argue that a firm's insiders (managers and large blockholders) may seek to overinvest in CSR for their private benefit to the extent that doing so improves their reputations as good global citizens and has a "warm- (...) class='Hi'>glow" effect. We test this hypothesis by investigating the relation between firms' CSR ratings and their ownership and capital structures. Employing a unique data set that categorizes the largest 3000 U. S. corporations as either socially responsible (SR) or socially irresponsible (SI), we find that on average, insiders' ownership and leverage are negatively related to the firm's social rating, while institutional ownership is uncorrelated with it. Assuming that higher CSR ratings is associated with higher CSR expenditure level, these results support our hypothesis that insiders induce firms to over-invest in CSR when they bear little of the cost of doing so. (shrink)

Companies are increasingly using cause-related marketing campaigns to engage consumers during the purchase process and highlight their own corporate social responsibility initiatives. One growing trend among retailers is the use of charity campaigns, where cashiers or technologies solicit consumers to donate money at checkout. Though these checkout charity campaigns are ubiquitous, little is known about their impact on consumers or the psychological processes involved. This paper addresses this gap by examining the process by which checkout charity appeals may license consumers (...) to engage in “guilty pleasures” counter to injunctive norms. In a series of four studies, we affirm this hypothesis, presenting a novel methodological approach for providing evidence of a credits-based process. This method utilizes a Johnson-Neyman procedure to demonstrate how a charitable donation creates a “warm-glow” feeling that subsequent counter-injunctive consumption erodes. In other words, we directly observe individuals “cashing in” credits to pay for bad behavior. We discuss the ethical implications of such campaigns in light of the subsequent behavior they may license. (shrink)

Eco-labels emphasize information disclosure as a tool to induce environmentally friendly behaviors by both firms and consumers. The goal of eco-labels is to reduce information asymmetry between producers and consumers over the environmental attributes of a product or service. However, by focusing on this information asymmetry, rather than on how the label meets consumer needs, eco-labels may send irrelevant, confusing, or even detrimental messages to consumers. In this article, the authors investigate how the environmental signal of eco-labels interacts with product (...) characteristics such as brand, quality, and price. In a discrete choice experiment, the authors examine consumer response to two similar eco-labels for wine, one associated with a quality reduction and the other not. The results show that respondents preferred both eco-labeled wines over otherwise identical conventional counterparts when the price was lower and the wine was from a lower quality region. However, they preferred conventional, more expensive wine from a high-quality region. This preference indicates that respondents not only obtain some warm glow value from eco-labeled wine but also possibly interpret eco-labeling as a signal of lower quality. This relationship held across both types of eco-labels, meaning that consumers did not understand the difference between them. This research contributes to the literature on information disclosure policies by highlighting important elements for effective eco-labels. These elements include consumer awareness and understanding of the eco-label, and consumer willingness to pay for an eco-labeled product. The results emphasize the need to create eco-labels that communicate clearly both the environmental attributes and the private benefits associated with them. (shrink)

We explore success drivers of reward-based crowdfunding for poverty alleviation in China. The results from our econometric modeling using data from 4375 reward-based crowdfunding campaigns suggest that poverty alleviation campaigns, as compared to ordinary ones, benefit from higher funded amounts, larger backer numbers, and greater success rates. The results also suggest that poverty alleviation campaigns perform better when the products sold originate from poorer (as compared to wealthier) regions and when price premiums are lower (as compared to higher). We corroborate (...) important findings from the field study with an experimental study, showing that the consumer’s feeling of warm glow accounts for the positive effects of poverty alleviation campaigns (as compared to ordinary) campaigns. We expand the applications of warm-glow theory into the context of reward-based crowdfunding campaigns for poverty alleviation and offer new insights into success drivers of such campaigns. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXV, Numbers 1 and 2, April/November 1999, pp. 139-153 Hume on Monkish Virtues WILLIAM DAVIE In the second Enquiry1 Hume denounces the "monkish virtues," saying that men of sense will regard them as vices because they "cross all... desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper" (EPM 270). He includes under this heading, "Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, (...) humility, silence, solitude." No doubt Hume's stance regarding the "monkish virtues" does fit into a particular vision of the desirable life, but it may be questioned whether it fits his philosophy with full consistency. In this paper, I will argue that Hume's explicit formula for identifying virtues fails to justify his rejection of the monkish virtues if it is followed without prejudice. I. Identifying Virtues Our whole comprehension of virtue, and our competence to identify it in any community, ultimately derives from our perception of virtue in particular instances. The edifice of morality reaches into the thin air of abstractions and general rules, but it does not begin there and it is always grounded in the concrete experience of human individuals. In the most basic case, what we perceive is not (say) the trait of kindness as embodied in George.2 We rather perceive the whole phenomenon of George in his particular situation. We pick up information about the person and the surroundings, including bits about motivation, moods, temptations, complications of all sorts, plus the general William Davie is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, 1295 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1295, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 140 William Davie background understanding we have of human nature. We ascertain whether the man's character is useful or agreeable, for himself or others. All this is needed to "pave the way" for the activation of moral sentiment. Then we get an impression (not an idea) of the man's virtue; we feel the warm glow of George's kindness on this particular occasion. How does language figure in our experience of moral differences? We know that as any individual's time on earth mounts up, and as one gains a few years of experience, he or she will gradually acquire abstract ideas and the words which signify them. Here in brief is Hume's account of the formation process (T 17-25). The first order of business is to notice a resemblance among certain objects of experience; we apply the same word to all of them. Thus, we would gather indefinitely many instances in which the word 'kind' is applied to something, or where somebody speaks of 'kindness.' The word becomes associated with a certain custom, or habit of mind, which custom is evoked whenever we hear or speak that word, or at least whenever the word is used wrongly. In that event, the custom fires up some relevant counterexamples for our attention. If somebody asserts, "True kindness is always well-planned and fully reflective," our mind instantly lights upon cases of spontaneous or impulsive kindness. If we should overhear, "She is a very kind person, so people don't like her," we know that something is amiss. Our competence in handling abstract ideas clearly underwrites the catalog that Hume confidently envisions at the start of his second Enquiry. We can make two lists, one for virtues and one for vices. In this process, Hume thinks, "The very nature of language guides us almost infallibly" (EPM 174). We can easily appreciate why it should be so. Our moral epithets are mounted on items of direct perception. Our understanding of a particular word is really a custom of associating certain elements of our own experience. He offers some concrete guides, each of which can be used from one's armchair : 1. A philosopher can "enter into his own breast" for a moment, and consider whether or not he should desire to have this or that quality ascribed to him. 2. He can consider whether the attribution of a particular quality to him would come from a friend or an enemy. 3. He can consider whether a quality, if ascribed to any person, "implies... (shrink)

Psychological well-being indicates individuals’ positive psychological functioning and well-being. A growing body of literature, largely based on adults and old people, suggests that volunteering and charitable donations are related to individuals’ psychological well-being. As emerging adulthood is a vital time for lifespan development, the aim of this study is to examine the effects of volunteering and charitable donation on individuals’ psychological well-being on college students. Relying on theories of altruism and the warm-glow theory, this study estimates the relationships (...) among hours of volunteering, amount of charitable donations, and psychological well-being from 1,871 Chinese college students. The linear regression results indicate that students’ hours of volunteering and the amount of charitable donations in the past year were positively associated with their psychological well-being. Volunteering, compared to charitable donations, had a slightly stronger association with psychological well-being. This study provides a rationale for academic institutions to integrate social service activities into the curriculum as a potential tool to promote students’ psychological well-being. (shrink)

We present a dynamical model of interaction between recognition memory and affect, focusing on the phenomenon of “warm glow of familiarity.” In our model, both familiarity and affect reflect quick monitoring of coherence in an attractor neural network. This model parsimoniously explains a variety of empirical phenomena, including mere-exposure and beauty-in-averages effects, and the speed of familiarity and affect judgments.

I discuss recent work by Ernst Fehr and his collaborators on cooperation and reciprocity. (i) Their work demonstrates conclusively the reality and importance of non-self-interested motivations. (ii) It allows for a useful distinction between trust and blind trust. (iii) It points to a category of quasi-moral norms, distinct both from social norms and moral norms. (iv) It demonstrates how social interactions can generate irrational belief formation. (v) It shows the potential of punishment for sustaining social norms and for overcoming the (...) second-order free rider problem as well as obstacles to group selection. (vi) It offers a provocative experimental basis for the ‘warm-glow’ explanation of altruistic behavior. I conclude by suggesting some experiments that might allow for further developments of the theory. (shrink)

This paper responds to Gui and Nelson's separate comments on our paper ‘Fraternity’, which analysed sociality in markets as joint commitment to mutual assistance. We argue that our analysis is fundamentally different both from Nelson's analysis and from that provided by theories of warm glow or guilt aversion, as discussed by Gui. We agree with Gui that, in initiating and maintaining cooperative relationships, individuals sometimes incur personal costs to benefit others without any certainty of reciprocation, but we argue (...) that the intentions underlying such actions are cooperative rather than self-sacrificing. (shrink)

'Professor Vyse presents the historical, sociocultural, and psychological basis for superstition in a clear, interesting, and even entertaining way. What easily could have been a dry, over-intellectualized tome is, instead, a gem of a book that engaginly tells the story of what science has learned about superstition, of how pervasive and powerful superstition can be, and of why critical thinking skills are so important in everyday life.' -Douglas A. Bernstein, Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 'Many books deal with (...) irrational beliefs but have little to say about why people cling to superstitions...and what can be done to stem the rising tide of interest in pseudoscience and the paranormal. Professor Vyse has filled this vacuum with a book as entertaining as it is enlightening.' -Martin Gardner 'This book can be rewritten or updated every fifteen years, I believe, since new claptrap presents itself every day. And there are always victims out there ready to surrender their common sense for a talisman...or a ritual that puts them 'in' with their peers and gives them the warm glow of being avant-garde. Meanwhile, I urge the rationalists out there to snap up this book when they see it. It may be heading for the bonfires.' -James Randi, The James Randi Educational Foundation, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 'Employing scientific techniques and utilizing hard facts, Vyse shows how silly superstition really is.... This is a highly informative book, dealing with everything from chain letters to lucky charms to the lottery system.' -Amazon 'Vyse presents plenty of uncomfortable truths about the way most of us think, and plumbs a vast literary repetoire ranging from Chaucer and Melville through Leon Festinger to get us into his corner.' -Voice Literary Supplement 'An engaging introduction to psychology focused on a topic, superstition, of inherent interest to us all.' -Valerie M. Chase, The Boston Book Review. (shrink)

The article analyses experimental “solidarity games” with two benefactors and one beneficiary. Depending on their motive for giving—e.g., warm glow, altruism, or guilt—the benefactors’ response functions are either constant, decreasing, or increasing. If motives interact, or if envy is a concern, then more complex (unimodal) shapes may emerge. Controlling for random utility perturbations, we determine which and how many motives affect individual decision making. The main findings are that the motives of about 75% of the subjects can be (...) identified fairly sharply, that all of the motives discussed in the literature co-exist in the population, and that for any given individual no more than two motives (out of six motives considered overall) are identified. We conclude that a unifying motive for solidarity cannot be derived even when we allow for individually heterogeneous parameterization: different subjects give for different reasons and all existing social preference theories are partially correct. (shrink)

The garish glow of neon was part of what put Las Vegas on the map—quite literally. The city’s most distinctive form of expression, neon signs tell an elaborate story of the history of Las Vegas, from their debut in 1929 at the onset of the Depression, when their seductive tones lured travelers through the Mojave Desert to part with scarce dollars, to today, when their flickering glow is a vanishing facet of the gaudy spectacle that is contemporary Vegas. (...) Established in 1996 to preserve Las Vegas’s underappreciated neon heritage, the Neon Boneyard houses many of the city's historic casino signs on a three-acre site at the edge of the city. The core of the collection of unrestored signage came from the pioneering Young Electric Sign Company, one of the first to produce neon signs in the area; but, in recent years, it has grown through donations from businesses and individuals who appreciate the key role played by neon in the growth of Las Vegas. Through Judy Natal’s photographs, the Neon Boneyard becomes a dynamic archaeological site that brings Vegas’s past to life in startling ways. The towering figure of Mr. O’Lucky becomes a home for the homeless, while the crumpled sign of a wedding chapel reflects the faded dreams of a lost paradise. Through such juxtapositions of success and failure, of past and present, Neon Boneyard: Las Vegas A–Z returns us to an earlier image of Vegas, suffused with the warm, commercial glow of neon, lighting the desert and inventing modern nightlife. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Figuring Myself Out:Certainty, Injury, and the Poststructuralist Repositioning of Bodies of IdentityJames Haywood Rolling Jr. (bio)CertaintyI have been attempting to figure myself out. Out of chaos and incompletion, toward increased certainty. I have been at this task of construction for quite some time now. I have just proposed my dissertation and my intentions are once again uncertain. My dissertation is to be a self-study. It is also a story (...) about uncertainty and my attempts to redeem a clear definition, to be named a peer and a colleague among artists, writers, and teachers. I have been uncertain as a little boy; uncertain as a son; uncertain as a student of architecture; uncertain as an artist and writer; uncertain as a teacher; uncertain as a black man. To compensate, I have sought the conferral of certainty, a name among leaders in many fields of inquiry. Still, it is not easy to forget that certainty has also been the cause of great injury to my body, to my mind.On sunny afternoons after school all the kids came outside to play. The air would fill with echoes going back and forth between the red brick and stone buildings on both sides of our narrow street. Pounding rubber balls, the taps and scratches of shoe heels, and the slapping of sneakers on the cement and asphalt.Sometimes white chalk would appear and hopscotch boxes were quickly drawn on the neat squares of cement pavement in front of my Grandma's house. Grandma lived next door to us. Houses on our block were side by side, sharing each other's walls.On a particular day, similar to other days, I watched as a small flat stone was tossed to bounce across the cement into a numbered box. I watched the one foot, two feet, one foot hops from box to box to stop and balance on one small hopping foot, steadying itself, to drop a hand to pick up the stone. Some little girl came to sit beside me and asked me to look at her. We were sitting on one of Grandma's two wooden benches, just inside the front gate. [End Page 46] Two steps down was the sidewalk and other kids. I ignored the girl. I made sure my body had no contact with hers on the bench. Why was she talking to me anyway? Didn't she see I didn't have anything I wanted to say?"Look at me!" she said, tugging at my arm."Will you stop it!" I snapped back, jerking my arm away. Being touched was not natural to me. My family didn't touch. I tightened the skin of my eyebrows and the bridge of my nose into a frown."Smile!" the little girl said slyly, trying to tickle me."Leave me alone!" I yelled. I tried to move away from the touching.I must have grinned. Grinning relaxes the frowns on faces. The girl clapped a hand over her mouth, all giggles. I asked what she was laughing so loud for. The kids out in front of us now had our attention. I felt like I was now being watched. I can't remember the faces, just the noise and voices that seemed to stop. The little girl stood up, pointed at my face and declared, finger in my face, pointing, speaking out loud, "Look! He only has one dimple! See?! Look at his face!""No I don't," I said, dropping my face, my eyes, my voice. My head was down and I didn't want to see if anyone was looking. The attention made my face warm and I needed to move away fast. "No I don't," I repeated, stiffly. My whole head seemed to glow brightly, very hot, drawing lots of attention. I was beneath windows, very near, on both sides of the street, always with onlookers. I rushed through the painted iron gate, going quickly next door, upstairs to "our house," to the second floor apartment we lived in, down the hallway so dark after the bright outside, around a curve and a corner, into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. Locking the door... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 307-308 [Access article in PDF] Mayer, Paola. Jena Romanticism and Its Appropriation of Jakob Böhme: Theosophy, Hagiography, Literature. McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Ideas, no. 25. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 242. Cloth, $65.00. Paolo Mayer sets out to revise the accepted image of the influence of Jakob Böhme, the sixteenth-century mystic and theosophist, on (...) the romantic poets and philosophers who congregated at Jena in the years 1798-1803. She convincingly argues that, except for the philosophers and critics Friedrich Schlegel and F. W. J. Schelling, Böhme's direct influence was negligible, more a matter of the self-proclaimed new religion of romanticism making ideological use of a controversial, in some sense subversive, forerunner in German literary history. In the hands of Ludwig Tieck, for instance, or Novalis, Böhme becomes a symbol of the new religion of Poesie and the hostile reception afforded by the orthodox evangelical pastors of his time becomes an allegory for the hostility that the new, "let it all hang out" aesthetic of romanticism encountered in the more classical and form-loving members of the literary culture. In Mayer's terms, Böhme's reception among the poets was hagiographic; he was the romantics' poster child.Böhme lived from 1575 to 1624. The son of peasants, but by no means unlettered, the "mystic shoemaker of Görlitz" claimed the source of his teachings was direct divine revelation. He claimed to have visions in 1600 and 1610, whose content he translated into his unusually graphic writings, interspersed with Pietist attacks on reason and on outward religious observances. This unusual 'theology' blended themes that F. Schlegel and Schelling, at least, found attractive: (a) the idea of a self-generating or developmental God, (b) an approach to the problem of evil that logically seems to place responsibility on God, and (c) a large systematic role for desire and will, rather than reason, in the origin of the world and in human salvation. Notable also is the physicalism of Böhme's theology, and the assignment of a wrathful nature to God the Father. Böhme's reception in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, determined largely by a first biography written in 1652 by a disciple named von Furstenburg, was generally warm in pietist circles, cool in rationalist quarters, e.g., in that of Lessing and Leibniz.The established story is that all the major romantic writers, poets as well as philosophers, were influenced through a direct study of Böhme's texts. Mayer takes issue with that, especially in the case of the poets Tieck and Novalis and the scientists J. W. Ritter. Though each of them writes glowingly of Böhme as a poet—in fact a persecuted poet, a near-martyr for the religion of Poesie—Mayer finds no sound evidence for a direct transmission, either of ideas or of terminology, from Böhme to these figures. What other literary critics have advanced as evidence is, she argues, a body of ideas and vocabulary common to the Neoplatonic, mystic tradition and to Christian thinking in general. If a stricter standard of proving "reception" than mere similarity of language is adopted, it seems that Tieck, Novalis, and Ritter had a slim acquaintance with Böhme's writings, but nonetheless advanced a hagiographic view of the "folk poet." Others among the Jena circle—Schleiermacher, A. W. Schlegel, Dorothea and Caroline Schlegel—took a skeptical view of this propagandistic ploy. Only the more philosophical minds, F. Schlegel and Schelling, read Böhme in any depth or ventured elaborate appropriations. Mayer argues that both these figures went [End Page 307] through an initial phase of enthusiasm for Böhme, to be later followed by personal reservations about him and, eventually, by public criticism from a philosophical or orthodox theological stance. Mayer obviously relishes the irony, in this case, of an initial idolization of Böhme as a representative of the 'new religion... (shrink)

Curious about the nature of light, Robert Boyle spent a series of late nights taking detailed observations of shining veal shanks, stinking fish, pieces of rotten wood which glowed in the dark, and a ‘noctiluca’ distilled from human urine. Once, report Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, with "only a foot-boy" to assist him, Boyle put a luminous diamond to the nocturnal test, "plunging it into oil and acid, spitting on it, and ‘taking it into bed with me, and holding it (...) a good while upon a warm part of my naked body’". (shrink)

This paper establishes a Kantian duty against screen overexposure. After defining screen exposure, I adopt a Kantian approach to its morality on the ground that Kant’s notion of duties to oneself easily captures wrongdoing in absence of harm or wrong to others. Then, I draw specifically on Kant’s ‘duties to oneself as an animal being’ to introduce a duty of self-government. This duty is based on the negative causal impact of the activities it regulates on a human being’s mental and (...) physical powers, and, ultimately, on the moral employment of these powers. After doing so, I argue that the duty against screen overexposure is an instance of the duty of self-government. Finally, I consider some objections. (shrink)

The vertebrate retina is said to be inverted because the photoreceptors are oriented in the posterior direction and are thus unable to maximize photodetection under conditions of low illumination. The tapetum lucidum is a photoreflective structure located posterior to the photoreceptors in the eyes of some fish and terrestrial animals. The tapetum reflects light forward, giving incident photons a “second chance” to collide with a photoreceptor, substantially enhancing retinal photosensitivity in dim light. Across vertebrates (and arthropods), there are a wide (...) variety of tapeta that vary in structure, chemical composition, and even tissue architecture, indicating repeated convergent evolution. To date, the tapetum has not been observed in any cephalopod, however, which also possess a camera‐like eye, but with the retinal photoreceptors oriented in the anterior direction. We therefore hypothesize that the tapetum lucidum is a compensatory adaptation for the suboptimal design of the inverted retina of vertebrates. (shrink)

Within the literature in green political theory on global environmental threats one can often find dissatisfaction with liberal theories of justice. This is true even though liberal cosmopolitans regularly point to global environmental problems as one reason for expanding the scope of justice beyond the territorial limits of the state. One of the causes for scepticism towards liberal approaches is that many of the most notable anti-cosmopolitan theories are also advanced by liberals. In this paper, I first explain why one (...) of the strongest expressions of liberal anti-cosmopolitanism cannot simply be dismissed because it may fail to support desired environmental ends. The political conception of justice represents one of the most important challenges to cosmopolitanism generally and is thus a serious challenge to viewing global environmental problems in terms of cosmopolitan justice. Second, I will show through the case of anthropogenic global warming that the political conception of justice under current conditions does have clear cosmopolitan implications despite its proponents' claims. (shrink)