Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.

Neither art nor philosophy was kind to beauty during the twentieth century. Much modern art disdains beauty, and many philosophers deeply suspect that beauty merely paints over or distracts us from horrors. Intellectuals consigned the passions of beauty to the margins, replacing them with the anemic and rarefied alternative, "aesthetic pleasure." In Only a Promise of Happiness, Alexander Nehamas reclaims beauty from its critics. He seeks to restore its place in art, to reestablish the connections among art, beauty, and (...) desire, and to show that the values of art, independently of their moral worth, are equally crucial to the rest of life.Nehamas makes his case with characteristic grace, sensitivity, and philosophical depth, supporting his arguments with searching studies of art and literature, high and low, from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Manet's Olympia to television. Throughout, the discussion of artworks is generously illustrated.Beauty, Nehamas concludes, may depend on appearance, but this does not make it superficial. The perception of beauty manifests a hope that life would be better if the object of beauty were part of it. This hope can shape and direct our lives for better or worse. We may discover misery in pursuit of beauty, or find that beauty offers no more than a tantalizing promise of happiness. But if beauty is always dangerous, it is also a pressing human concern that we must seek to understand, and not suppress. (shrink)

The Principle of Sufficient Reason says that all contingent facts must have explanation. In this 2006 volume, which was the first on the topic in the English language in nearly half a century, Alexander Pruss examines the substantive philosophical issues raised by the Principle Reason. Discussing various forms of the PSR and selected historical episodes, from Parmenides, Leibnez, and Hume, Pruss defends the claim that every true contingent proposition must have an explanation against major objections, including Hume's imaginability argument (...) and Peter van Inwagen's argument that the PSR entails modal fatalism. Pruss also provides a number of positive arguments for the PSR, based on considerations as different as the metaphysics of existence, counterfactuals and modality, negative explanations, and the everyday applicability of the PSR. Moreover, Pruss shows how the PSR would advance the discussion in a number of disparate fields, including meta-ethics and the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

The readiness potential (RP) is one of the most controversial topics in neuroscience and philosophy due to its perceived relevance to the role of conscious willing in action. Libet and colleagues reported that RP onset precedes both volitional movement and conscious awareness of willing that movement, suggesting that the experience of conscious will may not cause volitional movement (Libet, Gleason, Wright, & Pearl, 1983). Rather, they suggested that the RP indexes unconscious processes that may actually cause both volitional movement and (...) the accompanying conscious feeling of will (Libet et al., 1983; pg. 640). Here, we demonstrate that volitional movement can occur without an accompanying feeling of will. We additionally show that the neural processes indexed by RPs are insufficient to cause the experience of conscious willing. Specifically, RPs still occur when subjects make self-timed, endogenously-initiated movements due to a post-hypnotic suggestion, without a conscious feeling of having willed those movements. (shrink)

We examine some assumptions about the nature of 'levels of reality' in the light of examples drawn from physics. Three central assumptions of the standard view of such levels (for instance, Oppenheim and Putnam 1958) are (i) that levels are populated by entities of varying complexity, (ii) that there is a unique hierarchy of levels, ranging from the very small to the very large, and (iii) that the inhabitants of adjacent levels are related by the parthood relation. Using examples from (...) physics, we argue that it is more natural to view the inhabitants of levels as the behaviors of entities, rather than entities themselves. This suggests an account of reduction between levels, according to which one behavior reduces to another if the two are related by an appropriate limit relation. By considering cases where such inter-level reduction fails, we show that the hierarchy of behaviors differs in several respects from the standard hierarchy of entities. In particular, while on the standard view, lower-level entities are 'micro' parts of higher-level entities, on our view, a system's macro-level behavior can be seen as a ('non-spatial') part of its micro-level behavior. We argue that this second hierarchy is not really in conflict with the standard view and that it better suits examples of explanation in science. (shrink)

Die folgende Untersuchung nimmt eine informationsethische und anthropologische Perspektive ein und legt einen Schwerpunkt auf die Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) im Gesundheitsbereich. Zunächst beschreiben und problematisieren wir das Feld der Informationsethik, das im Wesentlichen heute als Ethik von umfassenden, digitalen Computersystemen als informationsprozessierenden Maschinen verstanden wird (Kap. 2). Im zweiten, anthropologischen Schritt untersuchen wir, wie informationelle Gesundheitstechnologien das menschliche Selbstverständnis beeinflussen (Kap. 3). Dies leitet über zur ethischen Fragestellung, die Überwachung, Kontrolle und Autonomie als Brennpunkte des Gesundheitsbereichs fokussiert (Kap. 4). (...) Zuletzt geben wir als Ausblick einige Hinweise, wie eine dezidiert theologische Perspektive auf die Herausforderungen aussehen kann (Kap. 5). -- Puzio, Anna/Filipovic, Alexander: Personen als Informationsbündel? Informationsethische Perspektiven auf den Gesundheitsbereich. In: Fritz, Alexis/Mandry, Christof/Proft, Ingo/Schuster, Josef (Hg.): Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion. Anthropologische und ethische Herausforderungen neuer Entwicklungen im Gesundheitsbereich (Jahrbuch für Moraltheologie, 5). Freiburg: Herder 2021, S. 89–114. (shrink)

Should machines be judges? Some say no, arguing that citizens would see robot-led legal proceedings as procedurally unfair because “having your day in court” is having another human adjudicate your claims. Prior research established that people obey the law in part because they see it as procedurally just. The introduction of artificially intelligent (AI) judges could therefore undermine sentiments of justice and legal compliance if citizens intuitively take machine-adjudicated proceedings to be less fair than the human-adjudicated status quo. Two original (...) experiments show that ordinary people share this intuition. There is a perceived “human-AI fairness gap.” -/- However, it is also possible to reduce — and perhaps even eliminate — the fairness gap through “algorithmic offsetting.” Affording a hearing before AI judges and enhancing the interpretability of AI-rendered decisions reduce the human-AI fairness gap. Moreover, the procedural justice advantage of a human over AI appears to be driven more by beliefs about the accuracy of the outcome and thoroughness of consideration, rather than doubts about whether a party felt it had a good opportunity to voice its opinions or whether the judge understood the perspective of the litigant. -/- The results support a common and fundamental objection to robot judges: There is a concerning human-AI fairness gap. Yet, the results also indicate that the strongest version of this challenge — human judges have irreducible procedural fairness advantages — is not reflected in public views. In some circumstances, people see a day in robot court as no less fair than a day in human court. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the relationship between the metaphysical doctrine of realism about the external world and semantic realism, as characterised by Michael Dummett. I argue that Dummett's conception of the relationship is flawed, and that Crispin Wright's account of the relationship, although designed to avoid the problems which beset Dummett's, nevertheless fails for similar reasons. I then aim to show that despite the fact that Dummett and Wright both fail to give a plausible account of the relationship between (...) semantic realism and the metaphysical doctrine of realism, the semantic issue and the metaphysical issue are importantly related. I outline the precise sense in which the evaluation of semantic realism is relevant to the evaluation of realism about the external world, a sense overlooked by opponents of Dummett, such as Simon Blackburn and Michael Devitt. I finish with some brief remarks on metaphysics, semantics, and the nature of philosophy, and suggest that Dummett's arguments against semantic realism can retain their relevance to metaphysical debate even if we reject Dummett's idea that the theory of meaning is thefoundation of all philosophy. (shrink)

Collision sports pose a high risk of concussion. How to respond to this risk is more ethically complex when considering children and adolescents due to a) incomplete evidence regarding the impact of concussion on developing brains, b) physiological and social vulnerability, and c) the young person’s reliance on proxy decision-makers, usually parents. There is also a lack of clear definitions of (a) collision sport (vs. contact sport) and (b) what constitutes a child or adolescent. We consider whether parents should be (...) free to allow their children/adolescents to play contact or collision sport. The article analyses the harms and benefits of collision sport and methods of determining risk, before outlining our support for the precautionary principle. We then consider whether the ‘best interests’ or ‘right to an open future’ framework ought to be applied to the issue of childhood participation in collision sport. Rather than supporting a ban of child/adolescent participation in collision sport, we argue that permissibility should be decided on a sport-by-sport basis. Moreover, we apply the ‘Accountability of Reasonableness’ framework to ensure that sound ethical values guide and support protections for this vulnerable group in the absence of high-quality evidence. (shrink)

RESUMEN La presente reflexión tiene como punto de partida la noción de antropotécnica desarrollada por el filósofo Peter Sloterdijk. El autor asume que los humanos somos seres ejercitantes en tanto día a día ejecutamos una serie de rutinas diarias que nos permiten modelar nuestra existencia. En dicho proceso nos encontramos con instituciones sociales que orientan tales ejercicios antropotécnicos. A partir de una caracterización exhaustiva del planteamiento de Sloterdijk, proponemos la noción de antropotécnica negativa, como envés de la antropotécnica, para referirnos (...) a una comprensión alternativa de las ejercitaciones contraindicadas que se realizan en oposición a valores legitimados e idealizados cutralmente sobre cómo modelar la existencia. Concluimos que la antropotécnica negativa puede ser un recurso analítico para aproximarnos a la mala ejercitación como fenómeno histórico y a la potencia existencial de algunas vidas que se expresan privilegiadamente como negatividad, abyección o marginalidad. ABSTRACT This analysis uses the notion of anthropotechnics developed by the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk as its starting point. The author assumes that humans are exercising beings in that day by day we carry out a series of diary routines that allow us to shape our existence. Within this process, we encounter social institutions that guide those anthropotechnics exercises. From an exhaustive characterization of Sloterdijk's approach, we propose the notion of negative anthropotechnics (as the inverse of anthropotechnics) to refer to an alternative understanding of the counterindicated exercises that are performed in opposition to legitimized and idealized values of how to shape existence. We conclude that negative anthropotechnics can be an analytical resource to approach malpractice as a historical phenomenon and to the existential potency of some lives that are expressed as privileged negativity, abjection, or marginality. (shrink)

Auch als originar politischer Denker ist Karl Jaspers reich an Einsichten: Ausgehend vom Ethos der Freiheit jedes Einzelnen richtet er seinen Blick auf die konkrete politische Gestaltung einer Freiheitsordnung. Dabei steht fur ihn im Hinblick auf die noch junge Bundesrepublik die Selbsterziehung in Freiheit im Zentrum seiner oft mahnenden Worte. Ganz im sokratischen Sinne fordert er intellektuelle Redlichkeit und politische Wahrhaftigkeit ein, um den beiden grossen Gegenwartsherausforderungen gewachsen zu sein: einer atomwaffenbestuckten Welt, die sich jederzeit selbst ausloschen kann, und dem (...) modernen Totalitarismus, der in seiner Verherrlichung des Antipolitischen allen politischen Ordnungsbestrebungen die Vernichtung androht. Jeder Frieden, der mehr ist als die Friedhofsruhe eines Waffenstillstands, grundet fur Jaspers in der politischen Freiheit handelnder Burgerinnen und Burger, die gemeinsam Sorge fur die Integritat ihres politischen Gemeinwesens tragen. Mit Beitragen von Karl-Heinz Breier, Alexander Gantschow, Anton Hugli, Annabelle Petschow, Kurt Salamun, Reinhard Schulz, Bernhard Sutor, Bernd Weidmann. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la recepción de la obra de Tucídides a principios del siglo XXI en el contexto de la intervención militar estadounidense en Irak y la discusión sobre el carácter imperial de Estados Unidos. Se observa un empleo de la historia de la Atenas clásica y de su imperio, en pos de incidir en los debates políticos, en donde se le asigna al pasado las funciones de “legitimación” y “advertencia”. Se concluye que el imperio ateniense (...) configuró un modelo alternativo de imperio, enunciado como hegemonía, para aquellos académicos y analistas reacios a comparar a los Estados Unidos con el modelo romano. (shrink)

Some intentional attitudes (beliefs, fears, desires, etc.) have a common focus in spite of there being no object at that focus. For example, two beliefs may be about the same witch even when there are no witches, different astronomers had beliefs directed at Vulcan, even though there is no such planet. This relation of having a common focus, whether or not there is an actual concrete object at that focus, is called intentional identity. In the first part of this thesis (...) I develop a new theory of intentional identity, the triangulation theory, and argue that it has significant advantages over the extant theories of intentional identity in the literature. Empty attitudes (attitudes that are not, prima facie, about anything that exists) will serve as useful cases for testing theories of intentional identity. -/- In the second part, I put the theory developed in the first part to work. I use triangulation theoretic tools to shed light on other debates about intentional attitudes. Some issues to which intentional identity are relevant are the debate about the content of intentional attitudes, the issue of whether or not we need to appeal to external constraints on the content of intentional attitudes, how we should understand the agreement and disagreement of attitudes, how we should construe communication and how we ought to solve Kripke’s puzzle about belief. The second part of this thesis also motivates a broadly internalist and individualistic approach to the con-tent of intentional attitudes; it turns out that if we take a closer look at the narrowly construed psychological states of agents we find materials that allow us to make sense of phenomena usually associated with externalist constraints on the content of attitudes (such as causal constraints and eligibility constraints) in a new way. (shrink)

A collection of essays by Alexander Rosenberg, the distinguished philosopher of science. The essays cover three broad areas related to Darwinian thought and naturalism: the first deals with the solution of philosophical problems such as reductionism, the second with the development of social theories, and the third with the intersection of evolutionary biology with economics, political philosophy, and public policy. Specific papers deal with naturalistic epistemology, the limits of reductionism, the biological justification of ethics, the so-called 'trolley problem' in (...) moral philosophy, the political philosophy of biological endowments, and the Human Genome Project and its implications for policy. Rosenberg's important writings on a variety of issues are here organized into a coherent philosophical framework which promises to be a significant and controversial contribution to scholarship in many areas. (shrink)

Expands the horizons of Jewish virtue ethics, demonstrating how central virtue has been to the history of Jewish ethics.

The study of these fundamental questions, which were in part already addressed in a first monographic section dedicated to Ḥasdai Crescas in the last issue of this journal, is expanded in its perspective and scope by the articles contained in this second dossier.

Legal and social norms regarding gender relations have undergone dramatic changes in the past 25 years. The changes have come about largely because of the confluence of changing economic and technological realities, the unfolding of the norm dictating equal treatment of individuals, the sexual revolution and its corollaries of improved contraception and legal abortion, the rise of women as a self-conscious group and a presence in the academy, and the interrelations of all of these factors. As men and women have (...) come to share dormitories and workplaces, and as the old mores governing sex—and male-female relations in general—have broken down, there has been struggle and uncertainty over what norms should apply to sexual relations. (shrink)

???Everyone agrees that the moral features of things supervene on their natural features??? , 22). Everyone is wrong, or so I will argue. In the first section, I explain the version of moral supervenience that Smith and others argue everyone should accept. In the second section, I argue that the mere conceptual possibility of a divine command theory of morality is sufficient to refute the version of moral supervenience under consideration. Lastly, I consider and respond to two objections, showing, among (...) other things, that while DCT is sufficient to refute this version of moral supervenience it is not necessary. (shrink)

Text und Übersetzung -- Arabisch-lateinisch-griechisches Wörterverzeichnis -- Griechisch-arabisches Wörterverzeichnis -- Versio Latina.

Geiger, M. Alexander Pfänders methodische Stellung.--Schwarz, P. Über die Oberste ontologische Kategorie.--Stavenhagen, K. Charismatische Persönlichkeitseinungen.--Celms, T. Lebensumgebung und Lebensprojektion.--Beck, M. Problem der Analogie zwischen seelischen und Dinglichen Qualitäten.--Spiegelberg, H. Sinn und recht der Begründung in der axiologischen und praktischen Philosophie.--Voigtländer, E. Bemerkungen zur Psychologie der Gesinnungen.--Löwenstein, K. Wunsch und wünschen.--Löw, F. Über die Definition.-- Specht, W. Die Grenzen der biologischen Erfassung der Persönlichkeit.--Heller, E. Über die Willenshandlung.

Christianity claims that the incarnation provides reliable knowledge about God but also that the incarnation was undertaken freely and thus need not have happened. Alexander Garton-Eisenacher resolves this tension between epistemological reliability and divine freedom, building particularly from the work of Karl Barth. Garton-Eisenacher offers a fresh reading of the Church Dogmatics that demonstrates how Barth’s theology provides a promising starting point but notes that his argument is ultimately undermined by the doctrine of eternity within which it is framed. (...) The author overcomes this issue by showing how the promising motifs employed by Barth can be authentically derived from the classical doctrine of eternity instead. In so doing, this work shows that reading classical eternity against a Barthian background also serves to draw out a more temporal interpretation of the doctrine than its contemporary characterization, reclaiming it as a viable Christian understanding of God’s relationship to time. (shrink)

An Kunst teilnehmen heisst immer, sich der Kunst als Kunst bewusst zu sein und sich zugleich von ihrem Schein einnehmen zu lassen. Alexander García Düttmanns Buch ist der erste systematische Versuch, die Teilnahme an Kunst zu erklären und dadurch ein neues licht auf die Teilnahme an Politik zu werfen.

Zum modernen Selbstverständnis der Kunst gehörte es, gegebene Wissensbestände und Traditionen in Frage zu stellen. Heute übt sich Kunst vielfach in konformistischer Bestätigung des neoliberalen Zeitgeistes, vor allem dort, wo sie ihre eigene Radikalität verkennt. Was ist Gegenwartskunst? ist der Versuch, das Verhältnis von Kunst und Politik für unsere Gegenwart auf den Begriff zu bringen. Alexander García Düttmann gelingt es in seinem neuen Essay nicht nur, die Gegenwartskunst in ihrer Radikalität theoretisch zu fassen, sondern auch zu zeigen, wie sie (...) dazu dient, die politische Ideologie unserer Zeit zu verstärken: eine Ideologie, die eine wirkliche gesellschaftliche Veränderung hintertreibt. Das Buch führt so ins Zentrum der politisch-ästhetischen Debatten unserer Gegenwart"--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Context: Maturana’s lifework is extensive, and consists of a coherent network of interlinked ideas the consequences of which have not been fully explored. Problem: What does it take to understand Maturana’s work? Is “learning” Maturana as arduous as learning a completely different language, or is there sufficient value in learning selected elements of his network of ideas? Method: We discuss these fundamental questions and relate them to aspects of understanding, word meaning and the scientific method. Results: While getting only partially (...) familiar with Maturana can have its merits in certain contexts, there is a clear danger of trying to understand Maturana on the basis of words such as autopoiesis, consciousness, cognition, and science. Implications: We identify three directions in which Maturana’s ideas can be further explored: preparing social media videos, finding ever new domains of application, and their historical-conceptual relativization. (shrink)

"One of the outstanding authorities on the early days of the Republic, Saul K. Padover offers in this volume a generous sampling of the letters, essays, speeches, discourses, and personal documents--many of them previously unpublished--of the men who made America. Included are extensive selections from the papers and speeches of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. There are also copious extracts from the private and public utterances of secondary, but important, figures of (...) the founding days--Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Patrick Henry, John Dickinson, Oliver Ellsworth, William Paterson, Benjamin Rush, George Wythe, and many others. A number of the speeches made at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 are given in full, and several of the important debates are reproduced. John Dickinson's Letters from an American Farmer in Pennsylvania appear in these pages as well as many of Alexander Hamilton's famous and brief opinions. Also included are John Hancock's speech on the Boston Massacre; Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia; James Madison's Memorial against Religious Assessments; two of the most important of John Marshall's Supreme Court decisions (Marbury vs. Madison and McCulloch vs. Maryland); Robert Morris' Letters on Finance; John Taylor's paper On Aristocracy, and William Paterson's Plan for a Constitution. Taken together, these writings offer in one volume a complete picture of the thinking, the debate, the legal maneuvers, the compromises, the manners, and the morals of the American nation's earliest days. The book provides a sound basic appreciation of the atmosphere in which the Founding Fathers worked and planned and debated with one another. All the many counter-currents that contributed to the building of the Constitution, the stresses to which the young nation was subjected, the rebellion that continued to seethe, the moral climate of the days--these are all recreated in the speeches and writings of America's first patriots. Dr. Padover has bound the selections together with enlightening commentary that enables the reader to understand the exact circumstances of each utterance and brings the particular work into historical perspective."--Jacket. (shrink)

Bas C. van Fraassen, in his Terry Lectures at Yale University, is concerned to elucidate what empiricism is, and could be, given past and current failures of characterization. He contends that naïve empiricism—the metaphilosophical position that characterizes empiricism in terms of a thesis—is self-refuting, and he offers a reductio ad absurdum to substantiate this claim. Moreover, in place of naïve empiricism, van Fraassen endorses stance empiricism: the metaphilosophical position that characterizes empiricism in terms of certain attitudes and commitments. The present (...) article, however, argues that van Fraassen begs the question in his reductio of naïve empiricism, and thus that his primary defense of stance empiricism is inadequate. (shrink)

In this article, I aim to introduce Marc Richir’s refoundation of transcendantal phenomenology. Starting from the double—“symbolic” and properly “phenomenological”—constitution of the concept of phenomenon, I present the key concepts of Richir’s “phenomenology nova methodo”: hyperbolical phenomenological epoché, schematism, affectivity, phantasy, and so on. Beneath the distinction between theory of knowledge and ontology, I seek to understand both the sense of what he calls the “endogenization” of the phenomenological field and, “beyond Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty,” the role of temporality in (...) the phenomenalization of the phenomenon. (shrink)

In this extraordinary work, Peter Alexander Meyers shows how the centerpiece of the Enlightenment—society as the symbol of collective human life and as the fundamental domain of human practice—was primarily composed and animated by its most ambivalent figure: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Displaying this new society as an evolving field of interdependence, Abandoned to Ourselves traces the emergence and moral significance of dependence itself within Rousseau’s encounters with a variety of discourses of order, including theology, natural philosophy, and music. Underpinning this (...) whole scene we discover a modernizing conception of the human Will, one that runs far deeper than Rousseau’s most famous trope, the “general Will.” As Abandoned to Ourselves weaves together historical acuity with theoretical insight, readers will find here elements for a reconstructed sociology inclusive of things and persons and, as a consequence, a new foundation for contemporary political theory. (shrink)

This book investigates the relationships between gestures and artefacts theoretically and historically, by analyzing different phenomena stemming from a variety of fields such as robotics, archaeology, gesture studies, anthropology, philosophy, and gestural practices like choreography, music performance, and composition. It underlines how embodiment and technology change the interplay between maker and artefact over time and appeals to students and researchers in these fields. Its goal is to enable the reader to understand that the recurring topics and questions as well as (...) multi-level similarities are by no means accidental, but can best be understood if one pays attention to the intertwinements of materiality and cognition, praxis and techne. (shrink)

A major theme of the European Enlightenment was the rationalization of value, the use of reason to determine the value of things, from diamonds to civilizations. This view of the Enlightenment is well-established in the human sciences. It is ripe for extension to the natural sciences, given the rich recent literature on affect, evaluation, and subjectivity in early modern science. Meanwhile, in art history, the new history of connoisseurship provides a model for the historical study of the evaluation of material (...) things. Historians of natural history have already noted the connections between science, Enlightenment, and connoisseurship. The time has come to extend their insights to other areas of Enlightenment science. This means recognizing the breadth of connoisseurship – the social, linguistic, and disciplinary diversity of the practice – as understood in Europe in the eighteenth century and the latter part of the seventeenth century. An outline of the three papers in this special section gives an indication of how this historiographical project might be carried out. (shrink)

Alexander Eliot, distinguished critic and art historian, breaks through to the silent world of masterpieces and makes them live anew in the eye of the imagination. Eliot plumbs the truths expressed by the greatest works of painting, sculpture and architecture. Eliot¿s style is crystalline, and his purpose plain: to bring art back to the center of our culture.