In this paper the authors deals with the relation between the Irish Franciscan Hugh McCaghwell’s commentary on Scotus’s De anima (1639) and Suárez’s (1621). It is shown that the latter provided a model and a reference text for McCaghwell who reproduces the philosopher’s thought within his commentary. Moreover, the explicit and implicit quotations of Suárez are taken into account: far from admitting his debt, McCaghwell criticizes the philosopher when he does not seem to follow the Scotist path. The commentary’s sections (...) analysed are those concerning the Scotist account of abstraction and the cognition of material substances. (shrink)

This paper analyses the criticisms put forward by the Scotists of the 17th century to Thomas Aquinas’ commentators on the subject of the intellect’s first object. What the intellect knows first, and what the extension of human cognition is, are questions that Aquinas addressed in several places in Summa theologiae, presenting conclusions which Scotus famously criticised. From the 15th century on, observed the tendency among Aquinas’ commentators to adjust themselves to Scotus’ opinion concerning this matter. The paper includes a collection (...) of the texts they mention and focuses on this ‘shift’ in the history of Aquinas’ readings. (shrink)

The volume offers a series of systematic studies on the concepts of intentionality, essence and person in medieval philosophy and phenomenology, with special focus on Aquinas, Scotus and Edith Stein.

The paper reconstructs the conception of the soul by the Spanish Jesuit Juan Maldonado, one of the first Jesuits who lectured on the Aristotelian De anima, through the analysis of the synthesis of the lectures he gave in Paris. Maldonado maintains the definition of the soul as form of the body but also suggests that there are more forms in the human compound. The paper aims to solve this tension through the comparison with the later De anima by Francisco Suárez.

The article deals with the influence of organizational ethics program components on managerial ethical behavior. The main aim was to establish which EP components are perceived as valuable and useful to foster the ethical behavior of managers. Moreover, we also aimed to investigate the role of ethics training in this context and to explore whether it can potentially increase managers’ trust in EP components as effective tools for the promotion of ethical behavior. The article advances the EP theory in several (...) ways. It offers novel insights into both business ethics and EP development in the specific cultural and social circumstances of a former socialist country in the Central and Eastern European region, Slovakia. It shows that codes of ethics and related reporting and control mechanisms are perceived as the most effective EP components to shape managerial ethical behavior. Furthermore, based on empirical evidence, and to some extent contrary to prior theory, the article unveils three EP functions, namely the ‘compliance with group norms,’ the ‘ethics education through collective discussion,’ and the ‘counselling and resolving of ethical issues’ at workplace. In addition, the article shows that ethics trainings can help to boost the trust of managers toward EP components and might be conceptualized as a precursor for an effectively functioning EP. (shrink)

Recently, there has been much talk of impact investing. Around the world, specialized intermediaries have appeared, mainstream financial players and governments have become involved, renowned universities have included impact investing courses in their curriculum, and a myriad of practitioner contributions have been published. Despite all this activity, conceptual clarity remains an issue: The absence of a uniform definition, the interchangeable use of alternative terms and unclear boundaries to related concepts such as socially responsible investment are being criticized. This article aims (...) to contribute to a better understanding of impact investing, which could help foster this specific investment style and guide further academic research. To do so, it investigates a large number of academic and practitioner works, highlighting areas of similarity and inconsistency on three levels: definitional, terminological, and strategic. Our research shows that, on a general level, heterogeneity—especially definitional and strategic—is less pronounced than expected. Yet, our research also reveals critical issues that need to be clarified to advance the field and increase its credibility. First and foremost, this includes the characteristics required of impact investees, notably whether they need to be organizations that prioritize their non-financial mission over the business side. Our results indicate that there may be different schools of thoughts concerning this matter. (shrink)

Adults who stutter (AWS) have demonstrated atypical coordination of motor and sensory regions during speech production. Yet little is known of the speech-motor network in AWS in the brief time window preceding audible speech onset. The purpose of the current study was to characterize neural oscillations in the speech-motor network during preparation for and execution of overt speech production in AWS using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Twelve AWS and twelve age-matched controls were presented with 220 words, each word embedded in a carrier (...) phrase. Controls were presented with the same word list as their matched AWS participant. Neural oscillatory activity was localized using minimum-variance beamforming during two time periods of interest: speech preparation (prior to speech onset) and speech execution (following speech onset). Compared to controls, AWS showed stronger beta (15-25Hz) suppression in the speech preparation stage, followed by stronger beta synchronization in the bilateral mouth motor cortex. AWS also recruited the right mouth motor cortex significantly earlier in the speech preparation stage compared to controls. Exaggerated motor preparation is discussed in the context of reduced coordination in the speech-motor network of AWS. It is further proposed that exaggerated beta synchronization may reflect a more strongly inhibited motor system that requires a stronger beta suppression to disengage prior to speech initiation. These novel findings highlight critical differences in the speech-motor network of AWS that occur prior to speech onset and emphasize the need to investigate further the speech-motor assembly in the stuttering population. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to critically reflect on the Polish transformation taking place in the interpretation of business law in the form of legal clarifications that can be qualified as a soft law guidance. The article attempts to address the following questions: does the new Polish legal framework offer really novel approaches to the interpretation of business law and/or its tools? What are the peculiarities that characterize the new instrument for the interpretation of business law in the form (...) of legal clarifications? What are the pros and cons of legal clarifications? What is the potential practical importance of the introduced interpretation tool, in particular in the context of certain previously existing tools for the interpretation of legal texts? To this end, first, the article sheds light into types of the interpretation of legal texts as well as soft law guidance. Second, it analyses the distinctive features of legal clarifications. Third, it contains the concise comparison of legal clarifications to certain previously existing instruments. In the last part before the conclusion, the topic required an attempt at an assessment. The point of the analysis in this article was both descriptive and normative. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to describe and explore the perception of ethical guidelines and their role in ethical competence-building among Swedish physicians and research nurses. Twelve informants were interviewed in depth. The results demonstrated that the informants had a critical attitude towards ethical guidelines and claimed to make little use of them in practical moral judgements. Ethical competence was seen primarily as character-building, related to virtues such as being empathic, honest and loyal to patients. Ethical competence was (...) assumed to be learned through good examples, role models and practical experience, while ethical guidelines were not perceived as valuable in this process. In order to improve the staff's familiarity with and the usability of ethical guidelines, the workplace needs to provide opportunities for ethical dialogues. In such discussions, argumentation can improve, virtues can be developed and guidelines can be usefully invoked. (shrink)

Definition of the problemThe medical-ethical principle of beneficence is directed towards the well-being of patients. In clinical practice, the focus is often on the relief of pain, the elimination of symptoms and the restoration of bodily functioning. However, the significance of these health-related aspects for the overall well-being of patients also depends on individual values, desires, and life plans.ArgumentationAn overemphasis on the subjective perspective of patients on their well-being would admittedly lead to a strong substantial convergence of the two medical-ethical (...) principles of beneficence and respect for autonomy. In addition, it would not be compatible with some of the guiding principles of the medical profession. A mere objective perspective on patient well-being conversely carries the danger of imposing values on individual patients that they do not share. Consequently, actions that are intended to benefit patients instead harm them.ConclusionThrough a more detailed analysis of the relationship between health-related and overall well-being, this paper shows that health is only a relative value in our overall well-being. Basic health-related goods like a sound cardiovascular system or fully functioning lungs have special standing because they are seen as valuable independently of individual preferences and life plans, which means they are of objective value. (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)

Patients are usually granted autonomy rights, including the right to consent to or refuse treatment. These rights are commonly attributed to patients if they fulfil certain conditions. For example, a patient must sufficiently understand the information given to them before making a treatment decision. On the one hand, there is a large group of patients who meet these conditions. On the other hand, there is a group that clearly does not meet these conditions, including comatose patients or patients in the (...) late stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Then there is a group of patients who fall into the range in between. At the lower end of this range are so-called ‘marginal agents,’ which include young children and patients in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s disease. They also do not meet the typical requirements for autonomy, which is why they are usually granted fewer autonomy rights. However, some of them are capable of ‘pre-forms’ of autonomy that express what is important to them. These pre-forms differ from mere desires and reflect the identification/authenticity condition of autonomy. They have something in common with autonomous attitudes, choices, and actions – namely, they express the _value_ of autonomy. As I will argue, autonomy is a value worthy of protection and promotion – even in its non-reflexive forms. Against this background, it becomes clear _why_ we have autonomy duties, more precisely positive, autonomy-enabling duties, towards marginal agents and why we should give them as much attention as autonomy duties towards competent patients. (shrink)

The nonconscious orientation of attention to famous faces was investigated using masked 17 ms stimulus exposure. Each trial presented a simultaneous pair of one famous and one unfamiliar face, matched on physical characteristics, one each in left visual field (LVF) and right visual field (RVF). These were followed by a dot probe in either LVF or RVF to which participants made a speeded two-alternative forced-choice discrimination response. Participants subsequently evaluated the affective valence (good/evil) of the famous persons on a 7-point (...) scale. Higher accuracy of dot probe discrimination in the same visual field (VF) as the famous face suggested that attention was oriented towards faces of persons evaluated “good”, but a reverse orientation effect was observed for those evaluated “evil”. The awareness check presented the same face pairs under the same conditions, and participants were at chance in a task of selecting the famous face in each pair. The results suggest that famous faces can be identified without awareness, and that attention is attracted by the faces of famous persons not regarded as “evil”. (shrink)

Stakeholder maneuvers such as Internet media attacks or consumer boycotts can have devastating effects on companies. By contrary, vital relationships between companies and their stakeholders can be highly beneficial. A review of the existing stakeholder-management literature suggests to engage stakeholders in business activities in a positive manner. However, the types of successful engagement activities differ across industries. The purposes of this article are to develop an explanatory framework based on the literature findings, to introduce stakeholder-engagement literature to a segment of (...) the water sourcing industry, and to unfold industry’s stakeholder-engagement measures. Based on a content analysis of 11 cases, we investigate if and how companies in the natural mineral water bottling industry in Austria inform, communicate, and therefore engage with stakeholders. It became evident that fewer than three of eleven companies published information on sustainability or corporate social responsibility reports, open house days, workshops, or international community activities. Most companies maintained a website for their bottled natural mineral water or communicated quality consciousness. We conclude that most companies in the Austrian mineral water industry could increase their stakeholder-engagement activities to positively respond to challenging business environments. (shrink)

In the Edwardian period, the essays, novels, and criticism of G.K. Chesterton gave voice to a unique but emblematic form of patriotic anti-imperialism. The article places his views in the context of the Liberal Little Englander reaction to the Boer War, and offers two comparative case studies. The first focuses on Chesterton's inheritance of the late-Victorian anti-imperialist rhetoric of William Morris; the second assesses his fraught relationship with internationalism, as represented in the writings of Morris's political collaborator, E.B. Bax. Chesterton's (...) radical populist patriotism, it turns out, had more in common with contemporary socialist ideologies than the currently prevailing view of its parochialism would allow. ☆ I am grateful to Peter Mandler, Julia Stapleton, and Tom Deveson for their input. (shrink)

Deception is a reasonably common part of daily life that society sometimes demonstrates a degree of acceptance of, and occasionally people are very willing to be deceived. But can a computer identify deception and distinguish it from that which is not deceptive? We explore deception in various guises, differentiating it from lies, and highlighting the influence of medium and message in both deception and its detection. Our investigations to date have uncovered disagreements relating to the measurements of such cues, and (...) variations in interpretations, as could be problematic in building a deception detection system. (shrink)

Technology has developed to the point where a clear distinction between nature and culture seems to be dissolving. Against this background, a broad aspect of social research has emerged that considers an interdependence between the social and the material. So far, social-systems cybernetics as described by Luhmann has remained rather marginalized in these discussions. This article is intended to overcome this marginalization by developing the concept of meaning. Meaning can abstractly be defined as a ‘doing negativity’. Returning to systems theory, (...) it becomes obvious that verbalized meaning is only one possible medium of meaning. Adopting some concepts from Helmuth Plessner, I introduce another medium of meaning – corporealized meaning, which also operates meaningfully along the distinction between actuality and potentiality, and thus does negativity. I discuss consequences of observing the relationship between sociality and materiality from this perspective. (shrink)

Quantification over individuals, times, and worlds can in principle be made explicit in the syntax of the object language, or left to the semantics and spelled out in the meta-language. The traditional view is that quantification over individuals is syntactically explicit, whereas quantification over times and worlds is not. But a growing body of literature proposes a uniform treatment. This paper examines the scopal interaction of aspectual raising verbs (begin), modals (can), and intensional raising verbs (threaten) with quantificational subjects in (...) Shupamem, Dutch, and English. It appears that aspectual raising verbs and at least modals may undergo the same kind of overt or covert scope-changing operations as nominal quantifiers; the case of intensional raising verbs is less clear. Scope interaction is thus shown to be a new potential diagnostic of object-linguistic quantification, and the similarity in the scope behavior of nominal and verbal quantifiers supports the grammatical plausibility of ontological symmetry, explored in Schlenker (2006). (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay examines two anonymous pamphlets that have sometimes been attributed to John Millar: the ‘Letters of Sidney’, and the ‘Letters of Crito’, both published in 1796 by the Scots Chronicle. It outlines the political context for the pamphlets’ publication and the evidence for and against Millar's authorship, and reassesses their contents' significance for our interpretation of Millar's other writings. While the ‘Letters of Crito’ present a classically Foxite critique of Pitt's ministry and Britain's war against revolutionary France, the ‘Letters (...) of Sidney’ put forth a more theoretical defence of property reform based upon a Smithian theory of justice. Yet taken together, the essay demonstrates the pamphlets offer new insights into the political discussions that were taking place in Scottish Foxite Whig circles in the 1790s. They also provide a snapshot of the various ways in which the theories of the Scottish Enlightenment could be used by Millar and his circle of friends and students to interpret the political context of the mid-1790s, as the French Revolution was transforming the political language of its English and Scottish contemporaries. (shrink)

This essay critically considers scientific and metaphorical understandings of the body and embodiment. It employs interrogates and employs the concepts of embodiment, ego, bodily intentionality, and anorexia from a phenomenological perspective. It considers the battery of concepts regarding embodiment: soma (the shape of the body), sarx (the flesh of the body) and pexis (the body and soul in unity). While Soma and sarx are the objective body, they are explained by the natural sciences. Pexis is the 'unobjective' body; it is (...) subjective, and it is to be studied as a subjective phenomenon. To understand pexis means to understand that the body does not finish with the skin but is connected to its surroundings. There is also a consideration of the possibilities of the body under Heidegger's idea of protention, which refers to the transformation of the body into an instrument. When the body is conceived of as an instrument or object anorexia is seen as an illness only of embodiment as soma . A richer alternative is the idea that anorexia is an illness of existence that can be explained by Heidegger's discussion of embodiment via the concept of dasein. (shrink)

Human and automated tutors attempt to choose pedagogical activities that will maximize student learning, informed by their estimates of the student's current knowledge. There has been substantial research on tracking and modeling student learning, but significantly less attention on how to plan teaching actions and how the assumed student model impacts the resulting plans. We frame the problem of optimally selecting teaching actions using a decision-theoretic approach and show how to formulate teaching as a partially observable Markov decision process planning (...) problem. This framework makes it possible to explore how different assumptions about student learning and behavior should affect the selection of teaching actions. We consider how to apply this framework to concept learning problems, and we present approximate methods for finding optimal teaching actions, given the large state and action spaces that arise in teaching. Through simulations and behavioral experiments, we explore the consequences of choosing teacher actions under different assumed student models. In two concept-learning tasks, we show that this technique can accelerate learning relative to baseline performance. (shrink)

Watching another person take actions to complete a goal and making inferences about that person's knowledge is a relatively natural task for people. This ability can be especially important in educational settings, where the inferences can be used for assessment, diagnosing misconceptions, and providing informative feedback. In this paper, we develop a general framework for automatically making such inferences based on observed actions; this framework is particularly relevant for inferring student knowledge in educational games and other interactive virtual environments. Our (...) approach relies on modeling action planning: We formalize the problem as a Markov decision process in which one must choose what actions to take to complete a goal, where choices will be dependent on one's beliefs about how actions affect the environment. We use a variation of inverse reinforcement learning to infer these beliefs. Through two lab experiments, we show that this model can recover people's beliefs in a simple environment, with accuracy comparable to that of human observers. We then demonstrate that the model can be used to provide real-time feedback and to model data from an existing educational game. (shrink)

In production and consumption of food, several ethical values are at stake for different affected parties and value conflicts in relation to food choices are frequent. The aim of this article was to present an ethical framework for well-grounded decisions on production and consumption of food, guided by the following questions: Which are the affected parties in relation to production and consumption of food? What ethical values are at stake for these parties? How can conflicts between the identified values be (...) handled from different ethical perspectives? Four affected parties, relevant for both production and consumption of food, were identified, namely animals, nature, producers and consumers. Working form a bottom-up perspective, several values for these parties were identified and discussed. For animals: welfare, not being exposed to pain and natural behavior; for nature: low negative impact on the environment and sustainable climate; for producers: fair salaries and safe working conditions; and for consumers: access to food, autonomy, health and food as part of a good life. As several of these values can come into conflict when choices of what to eat should be made, the article argues for the need of weighing values from four different perspectives in food ethics dilemmas, namely duties, consequences, virtues and care. The suggested ethical framework can provide moral guidance to both producers of food and to consumers in a supermarket. Thereby, it can contribute to more well-grounded decisions concerning what to eat and make people feel a little bit more secure when reflecting over the question: What shall we eat? (shrink)

Anna Alexandrova on value judgements and the measurement of well-being.

This article is the first to bring into scientific discussion and to provide a historico-philosophical analysis of a manuscript “Neoplatonic Philosophy from the archive of Pamfil Danylovych Yurkevych. The reviewed manuscript belongs to P. D. Yurkevych’s handwritten nachlass stored in the funds of the Institute of Manuscript of V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine in the city of Kyiv. Additional archival materials are involved to answer several research questions. The author of this article provides arguments in favor of proving (...) that the manuscript is to be attributed to P. D. Yurkevych’s own handwriting, to be dated circa 1856, and that the purposing of its content is to be qualified as didactic. As it is established in the article, textual content of the manuscript in question is an original concise description and analysis of neoplatonic philosophy, which belongs to the set of materials created by P. D. Yurkevych in preparation for teaching the course on Ancient Philosophy in Kyiv Theological Academy during Kyivan period of his work. Turning to the inner critique of the manuscript, author of this article emphasizes an analysis that P. D. Yurkevych conducts concerning Plotinus’s ideas of the process of emanation of the world from the One and the role that philosophy has in true cognition. While comparing the manuscript “Neoplatonic Philosophy” with one of P. D. Yurkevych’s substantial philosophical works “Idea”, additional light is shed upon the prosess of genesis and development of Christian-Platonic worldview of the thinker. Furthermore, it is established that the manuscript in question played a major role in P. D. Yurkevych’s own schooling, particulary concerning his view on the philosophy of Plotinus, and his general reception of the Platonic tradition. (shrink)

Environmental ethics has been dominated by an idealist logic that limits its positive impact on the natural world about which environmental philosophers care deeply. Environmental ethicists need to alter the ways we think and talk about what we value and the relations among ideas, values, and actions. Drawing on the sociology of religion and Marxian philosophy among other sources, a new approach may increase our understanding of how ideas are lived out and how we might increase the impact of our (...) ideas about the value of nature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narrative Formulation RevisitedOn Seeing the Person in Mental Health RecoveryAnna Bergqvist (bio)The use of narrative in mental health contexts models consciousness as something necessarily embodied, as already part of the world, in an inherently value-laden and perspectival way. As such narrative presents a powerful tool for critical reassessment and reevaluation of preconceived ideas in relating to difficult concepts in clinical interactions.Narrative structures can reveal psychological differences between persons in (...) a way that matters for the provision of effective treatment and management. As emphasized by Solomon (2015), narrative reasoning is also motivated by distinctly first-personal concerns that are operative in the practitioner–client relationship. I maintain that the dynamics of that interpersonal relationship are part and parcel of what it means to address the patient's needs to be seen as a person in humanistic empathetic care—without thereby reducing truth to an individual person's perspective to encourage positive transformation.1The notion of empowering narratives to encourage positive change is a core concept behind the emphasis on the critical role of empathy in explaining human development and psychoanalytic change within the self-psychology tradition but is also key to recovery-based models of the significance of person-centered quality of life in medicine more generally. This is defined in mental health as recovering a good quality of life as determined by the values of (by what matters or is important to) the individual concerned (Allott, Loganathan, & Fulford, 2002; Fulford, 1989, 2004; Fulford, Peile, & Carroll, 2012). The importance of strengths in this regard was reflected for example in the UK government program on values-based mental health assessment. The 3 Keys program, as it was called (National Institute for Mental Health in England, NIMHE, and the Care Services Improvement Partnership, 20082) identified three shared 'keys' to good practice in mental health assessment: three things that were identified in a wide-ranging consultation as being important alike by health professionals of all kinds and by 'service users' thus understood as patients and carers (Fulford, Duhig, Hankin, Hicks, & Keeble, 2015a; Fulford, Dewey, & King, 2015b). The third of these keys was defined in [End Page 7] the subsequently published Good Practice Guidance, as "a person-centred focus that builds on the strengths, resiliencies and aspirations of the individual service user as well as identifying his or her needs and challenges" (NIMHE, 2008: 6); and the guidance included a number of real-life case examples of best recovery practice reflecting this aspect of mental health care (Slade et al., 2014).What my (Bergqvist, 2018, 2020, 2022, forthcoming) account adds to this claim is that while such choices are revelatory or expressive of a distinctly first-personal stance, they do not constitute or determine selfhood and self-interpretation in a fixed way. Moreover, the reason is that one can also adopt a second-personal stance on one's own experience and address oneself, where the relationship between the first- and the second-personal narrative perspective on experience and self-understanding is itself a dynamic and open-ended evaluative process.Anna Bergqvist Anna Bergqvist is Reader in Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University since 2021, and has been Postgraduate Research Coordinator and AHRC North West Doctoral Pathway Consortium Lead for Philosophy since 2020. I was elected to a Visiting Fellowship at St Catherine's College University of Oxford for Michaelmas Term 2021. Her service to the profession out with the University includes acting as Secretary of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) Section for Philosophy & Humanities in Psychiatry (October 2020 – present), Executive Committee Member of the Royal College of Psychiatry (RCPsych) SIG in Philosophy (February 2020 – present) and External Examiner, University of Liverpool (November 2019 – present, 4-year tenure). She is also Director of the Values-based Theory Network at St Catherine's Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice at the University of Oxford, and Member of its Whiteness and Race Equality Network. Her approach to philosophy bridges the disciplines of moral philosophy, moral psychology and philosophy of psychiatry to improve lives through her reputable expertise in moral perception and co-production as a mechanism for change.Notes1. Here I side with Goldie (2012) and Solomon (2015), who... (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Journal of Ancient History Jahrgang: 4 Heft: 2 Seiten: 240-264.

Where social occasions, in the context of nightclubs and music venues, are bounded, the space of the entrance is accomplished via regulation of attendees by workers. This regulation ensures: the venue stays within capacity; people have been invited or pay the fee; entry to ‘undesirables,’ such as drunks, is prohibited. This paper draws from experience of attending social occasions and being a doorperson to categorise and examine methods of entering where access is restricted. Often methods require attendees to engage in (...) visible dialogue with the doorperson; where methods are invisible, attendees can circumvent access restrictions whilst a semblance of order is maintained. (shrink)

Is democracy necessarily bound to territorial spaces and boundaries, or can democratic processes and institutions dispense with territorial ties? To answer this question, which arises, for example, in debates about democracy beyond the state, this article reconstructs conceptions of territory influential in democratic theory, as well as in recent debates on transnational citizenship and territorial rights. It establishes the container-space, social-space, and place conceptions of territory, and negotiates a nuanced and multi-dimensional understanding of territorial spaces and boundaries and their relations (...) to democracy. Based on this conception, democracy does not necessarily depend on (a) territory. Neither, however, should this connection be dismissed lightly. Instead, proponents of both the preservation and the loosening of ties between democracy and territory need to answer two distinct, yet complementary questions concerning (1) the justification of territorial spaces and boundaries as social spaces, and (2) the functions they fulfil as container spaces. Exclusive place conceptions of territory, however, are not consistent with the proposed understanding of territory. In the final part, this article negotiates institutional perspectives for plural democratic spaces and boundaries by briefly reviewing theoretical sketches on democracy beyond the state, as well as developing constellations of nested political spaces within the European context. (shrink)

In the most general terms, the Logical Connection Argument states that theory and practice are two inseparable aspects of the same thing. Every action, linguistic or otherwise, is an indivisible unity of content and the means by which it is expressed. Alternatively, we may talk of the inseparability of content and form, meaning and act of expression, goal and method or means of its realization, and so forth. The argument was meant to prove that intentions cannot be treated as causes (...) in social scientific explanation, but it did it at the cost of making any meta-analysis, and hence, critique, highly problematic. My position is that the LCA is indeed logical, and hence irrefutable. Nonetheless, we can distinguish between “raw” and “refined” versions of the argument. The refined version maintains that while ultimately and ideally, the content and means of expression presuppose one another in the sense that a content is inconceivable without a form, and vice versa, in reality there is never a perfect match between aims and methods. In typical circumstances, we do not have a precise sense of what we are doing; the meaning of our actions is gradually discovered in the course of exploratory behaviors, of which critique is an indispensable part. In this contribution, I venture to examine the problem from a neuropsychological perspective with the view to showing in exactly what sense and to what extent explorative behaviors and associated motivations preside over other activities. I argue that content is always underdetermined with respect to its form, and hence the alleged internal connection between them is not a given, but rather amounts to a regulative principle which motivates mutual adjustments. (shrink)