In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 278-279 [Access article in PDF] Frederick C. Beiser. German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781-1801. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 726. Cloth, $59.95. With German Idealism Frederick Beiser adds to his already impressive body of work on classical German Philosophy. The aim of his book is to provide a historical account of the various forms the notion (...) of "idealism" took on in the work of Kant, Fichte, Hölderlin, Novalis, Friederich Schlegel, and Schelling. While the ruling picture of the period presents German idealism as the "metaphysics of subjectivity" blown up into mythic proportions, Beiser argues steadily and convincingly that "the development of German idealism consists not in an increasing subjectivism but in the very opposite: a growing realism and naturalism" (3).Nearly two-thirds of the book is devoted to Kant and Fichte. The treatment of Kant weighs in at just under two hundred pages, and is devoted to tracing his struggles with idealism in the pre-critical writings, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft and the Opus postumum. Unresolved Kantian problems serve as the launching pad for Fichte's "practical idealism." Beiser concentrates on Fichte's battles with skepticism and nihilism, his turn to the "primacy of the practical," and his efforts to provide a moral and inter-subjective foundation [End Page 278] for self-consciousness. The rest of the book deals with the ways in which the Kant-Fichte legacy is taken up and transformed into "absolute idealism" by the early Romantics and Schelling. Among the absolute idealists, it is Schelling—"the most inventive, brilliant, and productive" of them all (467)—who receives the most attention.It is a virtue of German Idealism that the trees of interpretive controversy are never mistaken for the idealist forest. In the body of the text, Beiser sticks closely to the task at hand, introducing the reader to the main lines of argumentation and the major philosophical stakes with exceptional skill and clarity. Scholarly debates are carried out mostly in the endnotes. This approach moves things along at a brisk pace, and makes for a refreshingly readable academic tome. It is perhaps inevitable, however, that a book of this scope will crack a little under the strain of its own weight. Three problems stand out. First, rejecting Hegel's self-aggrandizing account of the period is one thing, but it is surely overstating the case to say that the history of German idealism shows us that Hegel "was not the creative and original thinker that his history suggests or that his disciples imply" (11). Beiser's history, at least, does not justify such a claim. Pointing out that Hegelian-sounding ideas were in the air before Hegel started publishing does not suffice. Plato inherited from Parmenides the concern with "being," but this hardly makes him less of a creative and original thinker. Second, Beiser does not live up to his methodological promise to bracket "contemporary philosophical concerns and concepts" (ix). The book is littered with anachronisms. Schlegel is presented as attacking the "myth of the Given" (445-6), for example, while Schelling gives a "transcendental argument" for the self-knowledge of the absolute (589). Beiser also regularly classifies philosophers from the period as either "foundationalist" or "anti-foundationalist" (6-9, 235-9, 444-6), thus putting to work an undeniably contemporary "-ism" for which German, to this day, does not have a direct equivalent.Third, Beiser's treatment of the early German Romantics is too weak to serve as a bridge from Kant and Fichte to Schelling. While he is certainly right to insist that the early Romantics played a crucial role in the development of German idealism, he repeatedly conflates this claim with the less-than-convincing claim that they were philosophers with systematic ambitions. As a result, he seems ill at ease with their work, and has trouble dealing with the form within which they made their contributions. Take Schlegel for example. "For perfectly plausible reasons," we are told, "Schlegel was very skeptical of much... (shrink)

Tamar Schapiro has offered an important new ‘Kantian’ account of inclination and motivation, one that expands and refines Christine Korsgaard’s view. In this article I argue that Kant’s own view differs significantly from Schapiro’s. Above all, Kant thinks of inclinations as dispositions, not occurrent desires; and he does not believe that they stem directly from a non-rational source, as she argues. Schapiro’s ‘Kantian’ view rests on a much sharper distinction between the rational and non-rational parts of the soul. In the (...) process of explaining these differences, I argue that Kant’s own view is in some respects philosophically superior to Schapiro’s. (shrink)

This essay seeks to contribute to current debates about value in Kant's ethics. Its main objective is to dislodge the widely shared intuition that his view of autonomy requires constructivism or some other alternative to moral realism. I argue the following. Kant seems to think that the value of persons is due to their very nature, not to what anyone decides is the case (however rational or pure those decisions may be). He also seems to think that when we treat (...) persons as ends in themselves we are responding appropriately to the fact that their very nature elevates them above all other concerns. Neither of these beliefs is incompatible with his view of autonomy. So it is a mistake to think that Kant's ethics requires constructivism or any other form of anti-realism. (shrink)

This essay examines the connection between the concept of autonomy and the concept of an ideal, moral self in Kant’s practical philosophy. Its central thesis is that self-legislation does not rest on the capacity to exempt oneself from nature’s causal network. Instead, it rests on the practical capacity for identification with what Kant calls an individual’s “moral personality.” A person’s ability to identify with this morally ideal version of himself gives shape to his will, enabling him to decide how to (...) act on the basis of reasons that do not stem from desires or inclinations. It thus makes possible a form of volition that is autonomous rather than heteronomous. (shrink)

In his later writings, Kant distinguishes between autonomy and self-mastery or self-command. My article explains the relation between these two ideas, both of which are integral to his understanding of moral agency and the pursuit of virtue. I point to problems with other interpretations of this relation and offer an alternative. On my view, self-command is a condition or state achieved by those agents who become proficient at solving problems presented by the passions. Such agents are able to stick to (...) the results of self-legislation over time and thereby achieve a form of temporally extended freedom. (shrink)

It is well known that Kant bases morality on the autonomy of the will, which he defines as the "the property of the will by which it is a law to itself" (GMS 4:440). He thus locates the normative basis for all the demands of morality in the capacity of persons to be self-legislating. Many philosophers take this to be an attractive and distinctively modern form of moral theory. It establishes the individual's own reason as the highest authority in the (...) moral realm and grants her the capacity to subject any and all norms to rational scrutiny. However, many of Kant's less sympathetic critics reject this picture of morality because they find the concept of individual autonomy incoherent. In particular, many do not think that self-imposed laws can be binding in any meaningful sense. Laws that one gives oneself cannot really be laws. For this reason, the very idea of self-legislation seems "absurd," as Elizabeth Anscombe so pointedly puts the matter. (shrink)

As is well known, Kant presents several versions of the Categorical Imperative in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Traditionally readers have focused on the “universal law” formulation of his famous moral principle. Friends of Kant have found in the FUL an appealingly formal and seemingly rigorous criterion for right action, while foes have found in it a convenient whipping boy. Recently, however, much attention has shifted to the “humanity” formulation of the Categorical Imperative. The shift is motivated partly (...) by a general exhaustion with the FUL and the problems it generates—for example, the emptiness charge, as well as the problem of false positives and false negatives—as well as by a widely accepted commitment to the general idea that every human being is worthy of respect. Scholars such as Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Christine Korsgaard, and Allen Wood have greatly enriched our understanding of Kant’s work by emphasizing the role of the FH in his moral theory. (shrink)

According to Kant, passions are a distinct type of inclination. Unlike normal inclinations, however, they are inherently destructive—much like addictions. Recent scholarship on Kant's view has left two important questions unanswered. First, what is the key trouble-making difference between passions and normal inclinations? Second, what mental processes give rise to passions in the first place? My article answers both questions. I argue that passions involve a form of tunnel vision or hyperfocus that corrupts practical reason by hijacking attention. This problem (...) emerges when the imagination (or “fantasy”) distorts the processes that give rise to normal inclinations. (shrink)

This essay explores Kant’s account of judging. In it, I argue for two central claims. First, Kant defines the act of judgment as the exercise of a particular type of authority (Befugnis). When a person makes a judgment, she makes a claim to speak for everyone, and not just herself. She puts something forward as true. Kant’s term for this discursive authority is “objectivity validity,” and he identifies this as the essential feature of judging. Second, the Categories and the Principles (...) are what authorize a person to put something forward as true. This means that the objective validity of a judgment is supplied by the rules of the understanding rather than by something outside the mind. (shrink)

In the Preface to his impressive and engaging new commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason, Jay Rosenberg informs us that the book is both a product of his own lectures and a “direct descendent of Wilfrid Sellars’ legendary introduction to Kant” . Its origins in the classroom give Accessing Kant a refreshingly pedagogical tone. Throughout, Rosen-berg—who was a student of Sellars’ at the University of Pittsburgh—makes felicitous use of clear examples, familiar problems and authors, and visual aids to clarify (...) “the Big Picture” operating in the first Critique. Mercifully, however, his style owes little to Sellars’ own brutally opaque prose.Rosenberg also shares his teacher’s enthusiasm for the history of philosophy. The reader will not find Rosenberg sloughing off Kant’s “lesser predecessors” in the manner of P. F. Strawson. However, the history on display in Accessing Kant has more to do with the curricular demands of English-speaking philosophy departments than with Kant’s own intellectual and cultural context. This means that his Kant argues across the ages with giants rather than with his peers in Halle and Berlin. Nor, despite the occasional reference to Kant’s handwritten marginalia, does Rosenberg devote any effort to. (shrink)

One of the major debates of early modern philosophy concerned what David Hume called “the selfish hypothesis.” According to this view, all human conduct is motivated by self-love. Influential versions can be found in the writings of Hobbes, Mandeville, the Jansenists, and La Rochefoucauld. Important critics of this view included Butler, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Rousseau, Hume, and Smith. My essay argues that we should add Kant to this list of critics. I propose that Kant knew about this important debate and responded (...) to it. More specifically, I propose that he responded at two different levels. At one level, Kant sided with the critics, arguing for the reality of genuine fellow feeling. At another level, he concluded that everyone was arguing about the wrong thing. All the critics of the selfish hypothesis seek to vindicate common morality, but Kant thought this required establishing the possibility of human freedom. He believed that instead of arguing about whether we are capable of responding in a genuinely compassionate or sympathetic way to other people, we should be arguing about whether we are capable of responding in a nonmechanical way to the demands of morality. Looking at Kant’s practical philosophy from this underexplored perspective sheds new light on his doctrines of respect and moral worth. It renders both more interesting and intelligible, and it illuminates the direct connection between these doctrines and the fundamental concerns of his entire critical project. (shrink)

Book Reviews Eric Entrican Wilson, Kantian Review, FirstView Article.

Shoot straight from the hip. Tell it like it is. Keep it real. We love these commands, especially in America, because they invoke what we love to believe: that there is an authentic self to which we can be true. But while we mock Tricky Dick and Slick Willie, we are inventing identities on Facebook, paying thousands for plastic surgeries, tuning into news that simply verifies our opinions. This is frontier forthrightness gone dreamy: reality bites, after all, and faith-based initiatives (...) trump reality-based ones, and becoming disillusioned is a downer. In his new book, part memoir, part cultural analysis, Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life, Eric G. Wilson clarifies this confusion. He draws on neuroscience, psychology, sociology, philosophy, art, film, literature, and his own life to explore the possibility that there's no such thing as unwavering reality. Whether our left brains are shaping the raw data of our right into fabulous stories, or we are so saturated by society's conventions that we're always acting out prefab scripts, we can't help but be phony. But are some fakes more real than others? Are certain lies true? In lively prose—honest, provocative, erudite, witty, wide-ranging (as likely to riff on Bill Murray as to contemplate Plato)—Keep It Fakeanswers these questions, uncovering bracing truths about what it means to be human and helping us turn our necessary lying into artful living. (shrink)

The naturalistic fallacy is mentioned frequently by evolutionary psychologists as an erroneous way of thinking about the ethical implications of evolved behaviors. However, evolutionary psychologists are themselves confused about the naturalistic fallacy and use it inappropriately to forestall legitimate ethical discussion. We briefly review what the naturalistic fallacy is and why it is misused by evolutionary psychologists. Then we attempt to show how the ethical implications of evolved behaviors can be discussed constructively without impeding evolutionary psychological research. A key is (...) to show how ethical behaviors, in addition to unethical behaviors, can evolve by natural selection. (shrink)

The naturalistic fallacy is mentionedfrequently by evolutionary psychologists as anerroneous way of thinking about the ethicalimplications of evolved behaviors. However,evolutionary psychologists are themselvesconfused about the naturalistic fallacy and useit inappropriately to forestall legitimateethical discussion. We briefly review what thenaturalistic fallacy is and why it is misusedby evolutionary psychologists. Then we attemptto show how the ethical implications of evolvedbehaviors can be discussed constructivelywithout impeding evolutionary psychologicalresearch. A key is to show how ethicalbehaviors, in addition to unethical behaviors,can evolve by natural selection.

Demonstrating the limitations of the one-at-a-time approach, crowd initiatives reveal the surprisingly powerful role of analytic and design choices in shaping scientific results. At the same time, cross-cultural variability in effects is far below the levels initially expected. This highlights the value of “medium” science, leveraging diverse stimulus sets and extensive robustness checks to achieve integrative tests of competing theories.

Contradicting our earlier claims of American moral exceptionalism, recent self-replication evidence from our laboratory indicates that implicit puritanism characterizes the judgments of people across cultures. Implicit cultural evolution may lag behind explicit change, such that differences between traditional and non-traditional cultures are greater at a deliberative than an intuitive level. Not too deep down, perhaps we are all implicit puritans.

By organizing crowds of scientists to independently tackle the same research questions, we can collectively overcome the generalizability crisis. Strategies to draw inferences from a heterogeneous set of research approaches include aggregation, for instance, meta-analyzing the effect sizes obtained by different investigators, and parsing, attempting to identify theoretically meaningful moderators that explain the variability in results.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Matter and Spirit in the Age of Animal MagnetismEric G. WilsonDuring the Romantic period, writers on both sides of the Atlantic explored the sleepwalker as a merger of holiness and horror. Emerging when scientific thinkers for the first time were connecting spirit to electricity and magnetism, the somnambulist became to certain Romantics a disclosure of the difficulty of harmonizing unseen and seen, agency and necessity. This problem prominently arose (...) in Anton Mesmer's late eighteenth-century experiments in animal magnetism, in which the sleepwalker proved a paradox: an opaque revelation of transparent currents and an unconscious vehicle of sophisticated thought. Romantics such as Coleridge embraced the somnambulist as an embodiment of these troubles involved in relating motion and meaning. Coleridge and those who responded to him saw in the hypnotized human this sobering possibility: the invisible requires the visible to make itself manifest while the visible needs the invisible to become significant. 1 This is sublime and sinister: to elevate a material form to spiritual power is transcendence; to sink the boundless into a body is grotesque.Here I explore the philosophical implications of animal magnetism, the place of the sleepwalker in the history of ideas, and the role of the hypnotized human in Romantic writers, especially Coleridge. I also meditate on relationships between matter and spirit, machine and human, word and thing. Along the way, I place the history of ideas and the works of Romantic writers in mutually illuminating dialogues. The literary texts shed fresh light on philosophical problems while the ideas reveal hidden literary elements.The somnambulistic trance had been around long before Mesmer's magnetic sleeps. For centuries, shamans had used auto-hypnosis to sound [End Page 329] their souls and other-hypnosis to cure their tribe-members' ailments. However, somnambulism could not become a scientific phenomenon until Europeans in laboratories began to study electricity and magnetism. In the early modern period, Paracelsus argued that a vital fluid courses through the cosmos. The human being draws this flow like a magnet attracts force. When the body pulls to itself evil effluvia, it falls ill. To return patients to health, Paracelsus placed magnets on painful areas. He hoped to extract the unwanted current and return it to the cosmic swirl. 2 In "magnetizing" spirit, Paracelsus opened a door for empirical inquiry into the invisible world. In 1600, William Gilbert claimed that magnets correspond to the earth: both are animated by universal attraction and repulsion. 3 By the end of the seventeenth-century, Newton proposed that things are impelled by a force that draws and repels. Newton's theory of gravity inspired natural philosophers of the next centuries to search for a principle of which the magnet and the spark are manifestations. 4During the second half of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, natural philosophers explored electricity and magnetism with unprecedented precision. In 1752, Benjamin Franklin revealed the mystery of lightning and perhaps the spark of life. 5 Inspired by Franklin, F. C. Oetinger, J. L. Fricker, and Prokop Divisch developed a theology of electricity, based on the belief that God is the electrical current. 6 Later in the century, Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta debated over whether the galvanic flow might be the origin and principle of life itself. 7 A few years before Franklin harvested lightning, John Michell argued that the magnetic force is not constrained to lodestones but is possibly pervasive. Some years later, Franz Aepinus suggested that magnetism and electricity manifest a deep energy. Soon after, C. A. de Coulomb discovered the mathematical law by which electrical and magnetic forces operate (Whittaker, pp. 50–59).These findings led to the breakthroughs of the nineteenth century. 8 In 1807, Humphry Davy hypothesized that chemical elements interact through electromagnetic affinity or repulsion. 9 In 1820, H. C. Oersted demonstrated the correspondence between electricity and magnetism. The same year, A. M. Ampere formulated the laws by which electrical and magnetic currents interact (Whittaker, pp. 81–86). Michael Faraday in 1831 revealed electromagnetic induction and thus inaugurated a second Copernican revolution: he showed that matter is not solid and discrete but a field of electromagnetic energy. 10 The dreams of [End... (shrink)

L’auteur montre comment très tôt, c’est-à-dire dès 1793 et la « Recension d’Énésidème », Fichte se détache de la conception moderne du représentationalisme en épistémologie comme en sémantique. L’auteur analyse à ce titre la Déduction de la représentation de la WL de 1794. Si Kant reste prisonnier de la conception représentationaliste, Fichte s’engage dans une voie autre en effectuant ici une rupture décisive avec la tradition.

This volume presents a practical demonstration of the relevance of Carl Schmitt's thought to parapolitical studies, arguing that his constitutional theory is the one best suited to investing the 'deep state' with intellectual and doctrinal coherence. At the same time, the book also doubles as a thoroughgoing critique of Schmitt's intellectual legacy from a parapolitical perspective; namely, that the pluralistic, heterogeneous, and fragmentary nature of the parapolitical national security complex operates to subvert the total and monist notion of the State (...) and of sovereignty that are central to Schmitt's constitutional enterprise. (shrink)

Saint Anselm’s ontological argument is perhaps the most intriguing of all the traditional speculative proofs for the existence of God. Yet, his argument has been rejected outright by many philosophers. Most challenges stem from the basic conviction that no amount of logical analysis of a concept that is limited to the bounds of the "understanding" will ever be able to "reason" the existence in "reality" of any thing answering such a limited concept. However, it is not the intent of this (...) paper to prove or disprove Anselm’s argument. Rather, in this paper we concern ourselves with arriving at a sound interpretation of Anselm’s leading critic -- Immanuel Kant. Kant put forth perhaps the most vaunted criticism of Anselm’s argument. However, Kant has been perhaps the most misunderstood objector to Anselm’s argument. This paper confirms that charge, simultaneously offering what I believe to be a sound interpretation of Kant’s criticism. (shrink)

This essay discusses some of the ways in which De iure praedae may be understood to constitute a republican text. It is my argument that the 'Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty' should be firmly located within the over-arching republican discourse of the juvenilia, although the text's republican content is not immediately apparent. On close examination, a republican sub-text is detectible through the author's treatment of the discursive object of the text, the Dutch East India Company , a (...) corporate body. By attempting to legitimate the VOC's natural right to wage just war, Grotius invests a private entity with a public mark of sovereignty. This investiture of a non-state actor with public international legal personality forces a careful reappraisal of two central characteristics of seventeenth-century republican thought: the divisibility of sovereignty, and the fluid demarcation between the 'public' and the 'private' spheres. I conclude that the VOC may be accurately denoted a 'corporate sovereign', an entity whose legal personality is derived from the corporatist principles that underlined early republican and federalist theory. (shrink)

The naturalistic fallacy is mentionedfrequently by evolutionary psychologists as anerroneous way of thinking about the ethicalimplications of evolved behaviors. However,evolutionary psychologists are themselvesconfused about the naturalistic fallacy and useit inappropriately to forestall legitimateethical discussion. We briefly review what thenaturalistic fallacy is and why it is misusedby evolutionary psychologists. Then we attemptto show how the ethical implications of evolvedbehaviors can be discussed constructivelywithout impeding evolutionary psychologicalresearch. A key is to show how ethicalbehaviors, in addition to unethical behaviors,can evolve by natural selection.

Christian B. Miller has noted a “realism challenge” for virtue ethicists to provide an account of how the character gap between virtuous agents and non-virtuous agents can be bridged. This is precisely one of Han Feizi’s key criticisms against Confucian virtue ethics, as Eric L. Hutton argues, which also cuts across the Aristotelian one: appealing to virtuous agents as ethical models provides the wrong kind of guidance for the development of virtues. Hutton, however, without going into detail, notes that (...) the notion of rituals in the Confucian tradition may be able to sidestep Han Feizi’s criticism. In this essay, I wish to explore not only how the notion of rituals, alongside its corollaries in Xunzi’s Confucian program for ethical cultivation, indeed addresses Han Feizi’s criticism, but also observe that Aristotle’s tragic poetry plays functionally equivalent roles in his own understanding of ethical upbringing. I will begin by considering Han Feizi’s critique of ethical cultivation in virtue ethics as such and how it poses a specific problem for the acquisition of the ‘constitutive reasoning’ shared by Aristotle and Xunzi. I will then briefly note that this problem trades on the synthetic structure of human nature found in both Aristotle and Xunzi (the rational/irrational parts of the soul and the heartmind/five faculties), which grounds the way they understand ethical action and agency. Finally, I will suggest how both Aristotle and Xunzi understand the role of the arts in their extensive programme of ethical cultivation, allowing them to respond to Han Feizi’s attack as too narrow a construal of their respective ethical projects. It is hoped that, through this, we may gain a better sense of how more recent virtue ethicists may similarly draw on aesthetic resources for ethical development. (shrink)

"Thirty-five years ago few could have predicted that The New Science of Politics would be a best-seller by political theory standards. Compressed within the Draconian economy of the six Walgreen lectures is a complete theory of man, society, and history, presented at the most profound and intellectual level. . . . Voegelin's [work] stands out in bold relief from much of what has passed under the name of political science in recent decades. . . . The New Science is aptly (...) titled, for Voegelin makes clear at the outset that a 'return to the specific content' of premodern political theory is out of the question. . . . The subtitle of the book, An Introduction, clearly indicates that The New Science of Politics is an invitation to join the search for the recovery of our full humanity."--From the new Foreword by Dante Germino "This book must be considered one of the most enlightening essays on the character of European politics that has appeared in half a century. . . . This is a book powerful and vivid enough to make agreement or disagreement with even its main thesis relatively unimportant."-- Times Literary Supplement "Voegelin . . . is one of the most distinguished interpreters to Americans of the non-liberal streams of European thought. . . . He brings a remarkable breadth of knowledge, and a historical imagination that ranges frequently into brilliant insights and generalizations."--Francis G. Wilson, American Political Science Review "This book is beautifully constructed . . . his erudition constantly brings a startling illumination."--Martin Wright, International Affairs "A ledestar to thinking men who seek a restoration of political science on the classic and Christian basis . . . a significant accomplishment in the retheorization of our age."--Anthony Harrigan, Christian Century. (shrink)

This paper represents a response to the criticisms made by Eric Barnes in “Explanatory Unification and the Problem of Asymmetry” and “Explanatory Unification and Scientific Understanding” against the thesis of Explanatory Unification. This paper responds to Barnes‟ two main criticisms, that of derivational skepticism and causal asymmetry, and successfully refutes his objections. This paper also defends the plausibility of the unificationist account of scientific explanation because of its ability to render coherent the notion of scientific understanding, focusing in particular (...) on the work by Michael Friedman and Philip Kitcher. (shrink)

In his classic monograph, Social Choice and Individual Values, Arrow introduced the notion of a decisive coalition of voters as part of his mathematical framework for social choice theory. The subsequent literature on Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem has shown the importance for social choice theory of reasoning about coalitions of voters with different grades of decisiveness. The goal of this paper is a fine-grained analysis of reasoning about decisive coalitions, formalizing how the concept of a decisive coalition gives rise to a (...) social choice theoretic language and logic all of its own. We show that given Arrow’s axioms of the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives and Universal Domain, rationality postulates for social preference correspond to strong axioms about decisive coalitions. We demonstrate this correspondence with results of a kind familiar in economics—representation theorems—as well as results of a kind coming from mathematical logic—completeness theorems. We present a complete logic for reasoning about decisive coalitions, along with formal proofs of Arrow’s and Wilson’s theorems. In addition, we prove the correctness of an algorithm for calculating, given any social rationality postulate of a certain form in the language of binary preference, the corresponding axiom in the language of decisive coalitions. These results suggest for social choice theory new perspectives and tools from logic. (shrink)

How can mental properties bring about physical effects, as they seem to do, given that the physical realizers of the mental goings-on are already sufficient to cause these effects? This question gives rise to the problem of mental causation (MC) and its associated threats of causal overdetermination, mental causal exclusion, and mental causal irrelevance. Some (e.g., Cynthia and Graham Macdonald, and Stephen Yablo) have suggested that understanding mental-physical realization in terms of the determinable/determinate relation (henceforth, 'determination') provides the key to (...) solving the problem of MC: if mental properties are determinables of their physical realizers, then (since determinables and determinates are distinct, yet don't causally compete) all three threats may be avoided. Not everyone agrees that determination can do this good work, however. Some (e.g., Douglas Ehring, Eric Funkhauser, and Sven Walter) object that mental-physical realization can't be determination, since such realization lacks one or other characteristic feature of determination. I argue that on a proper understanding of the features of determination key to solving the problem of MC these arguments can be resisted. (shrink)

Haciendo uso de paquete informático Bibliometrix y de la Guía Prisma, se desarrolló un análisis bibliométrico de la literatura proveniente de la Web of Science sobre la competencia digital docente universitaria. Se delimita la investigación a través de tesauros de Eric. Se plantearon preguntas de investigación relacionadas con las fuentes de datos, los autores y las redes de colaboración. La investigación evidencia incrementos en la producción a partir del año 2019, la nacionalidad de los autores y la filiación de (...) instituciones resaltan a través de redes de investigaciones extendidas en Iberoamérica. Es necesario ampliar este estudio a otras bases científicas. (shrink)

Se realizó una revisión sistemática de la literatura localizada en Scopus sobre la competencia digital (CD) del profesorado universitario; con ayuda de la metodología PRISMA y operadores se delimitó la investigación a través de tesauros de Eric. Los autores/entidades españolas resaltan en la temática, existen esfuerzos orientados al diseño, validación y aplicación de rúbricas a nivel mundial. Los abordajes predominantemente son cuantitativos. La investigación fortalece el entendimiento sobre la CD, existe un efecto positivo otorgado por las CD docentes en (...) la formación de estudiantes, se requiere desarrollar planes de formación y emprender esfuerzos similares en otras bases de datos científicas. (shrink)