In the media and communications field, research investigating the digital media engagements of very young children at home has largely been restricted to survey methods relying on parental self-reports. Recognizing that qualitative approaches can provide insights in families’ practices, values, and attitudes, we argue for the fruitfulness of an ethnographic perspective, drawing on three cases from the project “A Day in the Digital Lives of children 0–3;” two in Sweden and one in England. Using the concept of methodological responsibility, we (...) argue that methodology and ethics are intrinsically entwined. We offer reflections on dilemmas and challenges involved in our participatory work with children under three and their families, bringing attention to such issues as ensuring initial and ongoing consent, using a video camera in the home and data sharing and dissemination. Building trust in such sensitive work is a complex process but the rewards are considerable. (shrink)

Philosophy professor, humorist, and identical twin Helena de Bres takes the curious, wondrous, ludicrous experience of being a twin as a lens through which to reconsider our place in the world and how we relate to others. Which one are you? Are you the same? Can you read each other's minds? Identical twins get the weirdest existential questions from strangers, also from loved ones, in fact, even from themselves. For twins fascinate all of us... including twins. For Helena (...) de Bres, this fascination was never far from philosophy's most unnerving unknowns. What makes someone themselves rather than someone else? What does perfect love look like? Can we really act freely? Drawing from her relationship with her own twin Julia, and accompanied by Julia's line drawings, Helena uses twinhood to rethink the limits of personhood, consciousness, love, freedom, even justice. With her inimitably candid, goofy, brilliant voice, she explores the long tradition of twin representations in art, myth, and popular culture; their "freakish" history; their peculiar social standing; and what it's really like to be one of two. With hope and humor, she argues that our reactions to twins reveal our broader desires and fears about selfhood, fate, and human connection, and that reflecting on twinhood can help each of us-twin and singleton alike-to recognize our own multiplicity, and approach life with greater curiosity, imagination, and courage. (shrink)

Spätestens seit der berühmten Anekdote vom Bild der schönen Helena gilt körperliche Schönheit als ein Kunstprodukt. Für sein Bildnis der Helena soll der griechische Maler Zeuxis die fünf hervorragendsten Jungfrauen ausgewählt und von jedem Modell den jeweils schönsten Körperteil gemalt haben. Nach dieser Vorstellung ist vollkommene Schönheit erst durch einen künstlichen Eingriff zu erzielen; das gilt sowohl für den lebendigen Körper als auch für sein künstlerisches Abbild. Kunst und Körperpflege stehen damit in einem spannungsvollen Wechselverhältnis. Denn die Grundlagen (...) und Mittel zur Erzeugung und Steigerung von körperlicher Schönheit, die in beiden Bereichen zur Verfügung stehen, überschneiden, ergänzen und beeinflussen sich. Das Buch beleuchtet dieses Wechselverhältnis anhand ausgewählter Grundlagentexte in deutscher Übersetzung, ergänzt um fundierte Kommentare zum historischen Kontext. (shrink)

Many women wrote philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain, and they wrote across the full range of philosophical topics. Yet these important women thinkers have been left out of the philosophical canon and many of them are barely known today. The aim of this book is to put them back on the map. It introduces twelve women philosophers - Mary Shepherd, Harriet Martineau, Ada Lovelace, George Eliot, Frances Power Cobbe, Helena Blavatsky, Julia Wedgwood, Victoria Welby, Arabella Buckley, Annie Besant, Vernon (...) Lee, and Constance Naden. Alison Stone looks at their views on naturalism, philosophy of mind, evolution, morality and religion, and progress in history. She shows how these women interacted and developed their philosophical views in conversation with one another, not only with their male contemporaries. The rich print and periodical culture of the period enabled these women to publish philosophy in forms accessible to a general readership, despite the restrictions women faced, such as having limited or no access to university education. Stone explains how these women became excluded from the history of philosophy because there was a cultural shift at the end of the nineteenth century towards specialised forms of philosophical writing, which depended on academic credentials that were still largely unavailable to women. (shrink)

How should thinkers cope with uncertainty? Julia Staffel breaks new ground in the study of rationality by answering this question and many others. She also explains how it is better to be less irrational, because less irrational degrees of belief are generally more accurate and better at guiding our actions.

In this paper I am concerned with the question of whether degrees of belief can figure in reasoning processes that are executed by humans. It is generally accepted that outright beliefs and intentions can be part of reasoning processes, but the role of degrees of belief remains unclear. The literature on subjective Bayesianism, which seems to be the natural place to look for discussions of the role of degrees of belief in reasoning, does not address the question of whether degrees (...) of belief play a role in real agents’ reasoning processes. On the other hand, the philosophical literature on reasoning, which relies much less heavily on idealizing assumptions about reasoners than Bayesianism, is almost exclusively concerned with outright belief. One possible explanation for why no philosopher has yet developed an account of reasoning with degrees of belief is that reasoning with degrees of belief is not possible for humans. In this paper, I will consider three arguments for this claim. I will show why these arguments are flawed, and conclude that, at least as far as these arguments are concerned, it seems like there is no good reason why the topic of reasoning with degrees of belief has received so little attention. (shrink)

Our ability to understand others is one of the most central parts of human life, but explaining how this ability develops remains a controversial issue, exercising psychologists and philosophers alike. Within this literature the Paradox of False Belief Understanding remains one of the main open challenges. Based on an up to date overview of the empirical and theoretical literature, this book highlights the significance of this paradox for our understanding of the development of social cognition and provides a new explanation (...) of it in the form of the Situational Mental File Account. Central features of the account are, firstly, identitfying three distinct stages in the development of belief understanding and, secondly, elaborating the role of both cognitive and situational factors as well as their interaction in the development of belief understanding. This account is also applied to the related phenomenon of pretend play, demonstrating the potential for a wider application of the account. This account generates both new empirical predications and a framework for further theoretical work, thereby providing a fruitful ground for further interdisciplinary research in this area. (shrink)

A recent hypothesis in empirical brain research on language is that the fundamental difference between animal and human communication systems is captured by the distinction between finite-state and more complex phrase-structure grammars, such as context-free and context-sensitive grammars. However, the relevance of this distinction for the study of language as a neurobiological system has been questioned and it has been suggested that a more relevant and partly analogous distinction is that between non-adjacent and adjacent dependencies. Online memory resources are central (...) to the processing of non-adjacent dependencies as information has to be maintained across intervening material. One proposal is that an external memory device in the form of a limited push-down stack is used to process non-adjacent dependencies. We tested this hypothesis in an artificial grammar learning paradigm where subjects acquired non-adjacent dependencies implicitly. Generally, we found no qualitative differences between the acquisition of non-adjacent dependencies and adjacent dependencies. This suggests that although the acquisition of non-adjacent dependencies requires more exposure to the acquisition material, it utilizes the same mechanisms used for acquiring adjacent dependencies. We challenge the push-down stack model further by testing its processing predictions for nested and crossed multiple non-adjacent dependencies. The push-down stack model is partly supported by the results, and we suggest that stack-like properties are some among many natural properties characterizing the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms that implement the online memory resources used in language and structured sequence processing. (shrink)

In this article I address the idea that in Husserl’s eidetic ontology all possibilities are fixed ‘in advance’ so that actual objects and events—despite their contingency—can only ever unfold possibilities that are ‘permitted’ to them by their essences. I show how this view distorts Husserl’s ontology and argue that this distortion stems from a misconstrual of the relations between essences and facts, and between ideal and real possibilities. These ‘local’ misconstruals reflect, I contend, a ‘global’ misunderstanding that mistakes descriptive distinctions (...) for ‘real’ separations, and that remains indebted to a non-Husserlian understanding of the a priori–a posteriori-distinction. In support of this argument, I first lay out the relevant objection to Husserl’s eidetics as I understand it. Then, I clarify the relation between ideal and real possibilities in the context of Husserl’s eidetics as I see it. Finally, I make a general point about the status of Husserl’s ontological differentiations ‘in the midst of life,’ namely in how what they differentiate is effective and (tacitly) manifest ever only as one moment (amongst many) of the complex whole that is a concrete life of consciousness. I end with some remarks on what this might mean for future phenomenological research on the imagination. (shrink)

This paper explores the theory of freedom that Emilie du Châtelet advances in her essay “On Freedom.” Using contemporary terminology, we can characterize this theory as a version of agent-causal compatibilism. More specifically, the theory has the following elements: (a) freedom consists in the power to act in accordance with one’s choices, (b) freedom requires the ability to suspend desires and master passions, (c) freedom requires a power of self-motion in the agent, and (d) freedom is compatible with moral necessity (...) but not with physical necessity. While these elements may at first appear disparate, the paper shows that they fit together quite well. The resulting theory is a surprising combination of doctrines that appear to be based on Samuel Clarke’s libertarian account of free will and doctrines that are reminiscent of the compatibilist accounts of John Locke, Anthony Collins, Gottfried Leibniz, and Thomas Hobbes. (shrink)

Popular uprisings, indignant youth, toppled dictators, oligarchic presidents dismissed, hopes dashed, liberties crushed in prisons, fixed trials, and bloodbaths. How are we to read these images? Could revolt, or what is called “riot” on the Web, be waking humanity from its dream of hyperconnectedness? Or could it just be a trick played on us so that the culture of spectacle can last longer? But what “revolt” are we talking about? Is it even possible?

Spoken language consists of a linear sequence of units, from which the existence of particular underlying hierarchical processing mechanisms is inferred. Uddén et al. use graph theory to provide a framework for describing the possible structural relationships that may underlie a linear output sequence. Being more explicit in defining different structures can help identifying and testing for such structures in AGL experiments, as well as help showing how behavioral and neuroimaging data reveals signatures of hierarchical processing in humans.

Trust and corporation (extracts) / by F.W. Maitland -- Respublica Christiana -- by J.N. Figgis -- Society and state / by R.M. MacIver -- The discredited state / by E. Barker -- Conflicting social obligations / by G.D.H. Cole -- Community is a process / by M.P. Follett -- The eruption of the group / by E. Barker -- The masses in a representative democracy / by M. Oakeshott -- The atavism of social justice / by F.A. von Hayek -- (...) Collective entities and moral rights / by V. van Dyke -- Capitalism, citizenship and community / by S. Macedo -- Liberalism and the politicization of ethnicity / by W. Kymlicka -- Are there any cultural rights? / by C. Kukathas -- The civil society argument / by M. Walzer. (shrink)

This volume, which follows hard on the heels of publication of the final volume of the 26-volume set of Kierkegaard's writings , allows its readers 'to find their way quickly to relevant sources of help,' elucidates Kierkegaard's 'central concepts,' and demonstrates the contemporary relevance of his ideas.

Bayesian epistemology provides a popular and powerful framework for modeling rational norms on credences, including how rational agents should respond to evidence. The framework is built on the assumption that ideally rational agents have credences, or degrees of belief, that are representable by numbers that obey the axioms of probability. From there, further constraints are proposed regarding which credence assignments are rationally permissible, and how rational agents’ credences should change upon learning new evidence. While the details are hotly disputed, all (...) flavors of Bayesianism purport to give us norms of ideal rationality. This raises the question of how exactly these norms apply to you and me, since perfect compliance with those ideal norms is out of reach for human thinkers. A common response is that Bayesian norms are ideals that human reasoners are supposed to approximate – the closer they come to being ideally rational, the better. To make this claim plausible, we need to make it more precise. In what sense is it better to be closer to ideally rational, and what is an appropriate measure of such closeness? This article sketches some possible answers to these questions. (shrink)

This collection of papers explores one of the central debates in the field of bioethics in the new century. It evaluates the controversy between the claim that there is a common morality accepted by all and the opposing view that there are different moral visions and moral rationalities, within which complex bioethical issues demand a solution. Contributions within this volume offer different approaches and perspectives on the pursuit of global ethics in the new century. They are organized under five major (...) themes. The first theme explores the different plausible understandings of the foundations of bioethics and contemporary reflections on the nature and role of moral theory. The second theme analyses the impact of moral loss and moral diversity on the character of bioethics and the search for alternative perspectives in post-traditional and post-modern societies. The third theme examines a number of theoretical issues raised by concrete examples of bioethnological applications, which bear importantly on contemporary debates between the possibility and impossibility of global bioethics. The fourth theme discusses examples of moral conflicts and dilemmas in everyday health care practice regarding the permissible treatment of humans by humans under different ethical perspectives and cultural traditions. The fifth theme explores alternative suggestions for opening up new modes of self-understanding and new strategies for bioethical exploration in the new century. The volume is an important work of reference for philosophers, moral theologians, ethicists, counsellors, doctors, nurses, sociologists, journalists, health care professionals, public policy makers and everyone who is interested in the profound ethical issues arising from modern technological advancements which are not only transforming our lives but are also demanding urgent ethical decision-making and `pragmatic' solutions from a cross-cultural perspective. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer niederländische Tierpsychologe Frederik J. J. Buytendijk (1887–1974) entwickelte in seinen Forschungen der 1920er und 1930er Jahre in Abgrenzung zum Behaviorismus eine antireduktionistische Zugangsweise auf Verhaltensexperimente. So bezog er in seinen Experimentalpraktiken explizit die subjektive Erfahrung des Versuchsleiters mit ein. Damit entwarf Buytendijk eine Wissenschaftstheorie, die methodologisch auf die Phänomenologie, Hermeneutik wie auf gestalttheoretische Ganzheitskonzepte zurückgriff, quantitative Datenerhebungen aber dennoch nicht aufgab. Vielmehr untersuchte Buytendijk auf der Grundlage des Biotheoretikers Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) in seinem physiologischen Institut in Groningen konkret (...) die These einer „Tier-Umwelt-Einheit“. Der vorliegende Beitrag ermittelt anhand der institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen und zweier Experimente (1924 und 1931), inwiefern Buytendijk seine Aussage, dass das Tier „mit und in seiner Umwelt geboren [ist]“, die zugleich sein wissenschaftsphilosophisches Konzept stützte, zu verifizieren wusste. Dass die Umwelt dem Tier ein Organ ist, ist bei Buytendijk dementsprechend nicht nur metaphorisch, sondern ganz real zu verstehen. (shrink)

In [3], two different effective versions of Borel embedding are defined. The first, called computable embedding, is based on uniform enumeration reducibility, while the second, called Turing computable embedding, is based on uniform Turing reducibility. While [3] focused mainly on computable embeddings, the present paper considers Turing computable embeddings. Although the two notions are not equivalent, we can show that they behave alike on the mathematically interesting classes chosen for investigation in [3]. We give a “Pull-back Theorem”, saying that if (...) Φ is a Turing computable embedding of K into K’, then for any computable infinitary sentence φ in the language of K’, we can find a computable infinitary sentence φ* in the language of K such that for all. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 1145-1151, December 2021.

Este articulo profundiza en una de las dimensiones más importantes de la filosofía de Levinas las raíces de su pensamiento desde las que emprende su proyecto de pensar de otro modo. El filósofo lituano se enfrenta con los modos de pensar propios de la filosofía occidental, del logos de la identidad y el retomo a si mismo, cuya figura es Ulises Frente a ello, plantea una filosofía entendida como ética, como un discurso sobre el otro que se convierte en responsabilidad (...) infinita, cuya imagen es la del patriarca Abraham dejando atrás su hogar y dirigiéndose a la tierra prometida. (shrink)

O presente trabalho aborda o conceito de vontade na Filosofia do espírito de Hegel. Segundo Hegel, a vontade possui um desenvolvimento que abrange três figuras: a vontade natural, o livre arbítrio e a vontade livre em si e para si. Os dois primeiros momentos do conceito encerram o querer como finito, pois o objeto desejado permanece, nestes casos, um limite, uma barreira para a realização da liberdade plena da vontade. Analisarei, portanto, com base nos conceitos de “finito” e “limite”, considerados (...) por Hegel na Ciência da lógica, as duas primeiras figuras finitas do conceito de vontade e sua necessária passagem para a infinitude da realização da liberdade. (shrink)

In _The Politics of Toleration in Modern Life _Susan Mendus gathers a group of distinguished public figures—philosophers, historians, lawyers, and religious leaders—to reflect on a core issue within contemporary political debate. At the close of a century that will be remembered for its two world wars and its eruptions of genocide, the contributors examine the importance of an insistence on tolerance and the dangers of its lack, both historically and in the present day. How can toleration be fostered in a (...) contentious and tightly populated world? What situations and fears have historically fed attitudes of intolerance? When and how should states intervene? The authors of these essays seek answers to such questions and examine topics such as why certain national groups are especially vulnerable to intolerance and narcissistic fantasies and how the colonial view of intolerant exploitation as an acceptable norm of behavior has been replaced by a drive toward international solidarity. The essays address religious tolerance, the role of toleration in legal contexts, the philosophical justification of tolerance, and the concept of solidarity. Ethnic identity, nationalism, the “goods of conflict,” and the treatment of refugees seeking asylum are discussed as well. While one contributor argues that a moment of genuine tolerance is achieved only when there is a cost involved in the act of tolerating another person’s way of living, another stresses that rational, communal dialogue can only take place if the state is excluded from the discussion, if conflict is recognized as valuable, and if local communities come to consensus about what behavior and discourse is intolerable. Offering an accessible and engaging commentary on the concept of tolerance, _The Politics of Toleration in Modern Life_ will interest a wide range of readers of philosophy, political science, religion, sociology, and history. _Contributors_. George Carey, Christopher Hill, Michael Ignatieff, Helena Kennedy, Alasdair MacIntyre, Susan Mendus, Julia Neuberger, Bernard Williams. (shrink)

The solution frequently being advocated to a range of regulatory and indeed constitutional questions is to devise procedures for participation, for democratization. The aim of this article is to explore just what the shift to procedures and to participation might involve. The article will appear in this Journal in two parts. The first part distinguishes between two possible forms of proceduralization: «thin» proceduralization, based on a liberal model of democracy, and «thick» proceduralization, based on deliberative models of democracy. In exploring (...) the latter, the article takes as its starting point the work of Habermas. Given the richness and complexity of his argument the development of the notion of thick proceduralization necessarily occurs in part through a critique of his work, for it is argued that although Habermas may provide an important starting point, his work cannot also be the end point of the debate. The second part of the article will discuss the modifications that may need to be made for «thick» proceduralization to be adopted as a regulatory strategy. (shrink)

Somewhere outside of Baton Rouge, my cousin is FaceTiming her children goodbye before intubation "just in case." They press a watercolor sun to the screen to give her good dreams while she sleeps. I think how recklessly hopeful, how gloriously human a thing it is to close one's eyes and trust the sun to...

Can moral theories of the kind Evagrius Ponticus upheld be useful today? Is his ethics one of many other virtue ethical theories or is it something else entirely? I argue that Evagrius’s theory of virtue is an instance of traditional Christian moral theory. Moreover, as a Christian theory, Evagrius’s moral system stands apart from non-Christian moral theories, virtue, consequentialist and deontological. I further maintain that his morality is robust, because it is able to undercut some of the strongest critiques generally (...) made against moral theories: those of inconsistency and selfishness. It is also successful, because it produced fertile cultural movements that continue at present. I conclude, however, that its theistic, kenotic and inverted nature presents a direct challenge to ethical assumptions of today. (shrink)

Tim Burton’s films are well known for being complex and emotionally powerful. In this book, Helena Bassil-Morozow employs Jungian and post-Jungian concepts of unconscious mental processes along with film semiotics, analysis of narrative devices and cinematic history, to explore the reworking of myth and fairytale in Burton’s gothic fantasy world. The book explores the idea that Burton’s lonely, rebellious ‘monstrous’ protagonists roam the earth because they are unable to fit into the normalising tendencies of society and become part of (...) ‘the crowd’. Divided into six chapters the book considers the concept of the archetype in various settings focusing on: the child the monster the superhero the genius the maniac the monstrous society. _Tim Burton: The Monster and the Crowd _offers an entirely fresh perspective on Tim Burton’s works. The book is essential reading for students and scholars of film or Jungian psychology, as well as anyone interested in critical issues in contemporary culture. It will also be of great help to those fans of Tim Burton who have been searching for a profound academic analysis of his works. (shrink)

Die exponierten Vertreter des deutsch-jüdischen Denkens tragen Spannun-gen aus, die für die Moderne kenn-zeichnend sind. Die Erfahrung des Lebens innerhalb vielfältiger, oft miteinander konfligie-render Sinnzusammenhänge, wird in diesem Denken zum Ausdruck ge-bracht. Die Forschung Paul Mendes-Flohrs widmet sich der Philosophie, der Literatur und der Kulturgeschichte des deutschen Judentums unter die-sem Aspekt. In diesem Sammelband sind Beiträge enthalten, die das deutsch-jüdische Denken und damit verwandte Themen als Prisma der Moderne betrachten.

Epicurus' answers to the problem of how we can be free agents in his atomic world do not seem at first to cohere. I examine all of them, including a notorious papyrus fragment.

Philip Kitcher’s account of scientific realism in 'The Advancement of Science' (AS) differs from his account in 'Science, Truth and Democracy' (STD). We demonstrate that (1) contrary to appearance, Kitcher in AS proposes a so-called Kantian realism that is accompanied not by a correspondence theory, but by a hybrid conception of truth. (2) Also, we point out that Kitcher does not pertain to the “promiscuous realism” proposed in STD stringently, but falls back on his Kantian realism of AS at points. (...) Here, we question Kitcher’s claim that his promiscuous-realist conception stems initially from commonsensical be-liefs. (shrink)